


Batagaika

by Greekhoop



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Environmentalism, Horror, M/M, Original Character(s), Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:54:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21972415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greekhoop/pseuds/Greekhoop
Summary: Ever since the Apocalypse was averted, strange phenomena have been happening around the world. Aziraphale and Crowley postpone their retirement to investigate, and find themselves drawn to a remote region in the Siberian wilderness where a new threat to humanity is taking shape.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 23





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hw_campbell_jr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hw_campbell_jr/gifts).



> Here is a gift for my dear friend hw_campbell_jr. She likes Aziraphale and Crowley, and she likes stories about environmental collapse. What could possibly go wrong if I combine the two?

> _Empathy with the land. This we learn in childhood. The land has changed. The biosphere turned; has become unfamiliar and erratic. I would say eventual, but nature is indifferent to us. We fight for our survival, not nature's. There's a fierceness in the world that we never felt before. Something is being unleashed in the softening permafrost. Why do we despise the world that gave us life? Why wouldn't the world survive us, like any organism survives a virus. The world that we grew up in is changed forever. There is no way home._
> 
> -The Last Winter

____________________________________________________

It was Aziraphale’s first time in the Colonies. He was loathe to tell Crowley as much, though he did have a sneaking suspicion that Crowley already knew. This was followed almost immediately by an equally stealthy notion that he must not suspect a thing, or else he would never have let Aziraphale live his provincialism down.

Crowley had, no doubt, been a great many places in his long history. Aziraphale imagined that all those countless years that they had spent apart were filled with enough colorful and picaresque adventures to populate the libraries of a hundred young boys and at least that many emotionally-stunted men. It was with a half-baked and wholly-thrilled Orientalism that he imagined Crowley at all the far corners of the Earth, dressed in an array of colorful native costumes. Perhaps even stowing away on an Apollo mission, a little green man in dark glasses wreaking havoc amongst the stars.

But when he chanced a glance towards the driver’s seat, where Crowley sat with his eyes fixed on the highway ahead of them, his hands less at ten and two than at 4:45 but at least both still on the wheel, Aziraphale had to wonder if he was really as worldly as he let on. Certainly he had never been so careful when driving on the familiar roads of London. It gave Aziraphale a secret thrill to contemplate that this might all be new to him as well.

“You’re doing it again,” Crowley sniffed. In much the way he was taking care to drive on the right side of the road, he was also taking care to sound annoyed.

“Doing what?” Aziraphale said innocently.

“Smiling,” Crowley informed him flatly.

“I’m not entirely sure I can stop doing that.” Aziraphale refused to apologize for any involuntary muscular contortions his corporeal body might come up with in its seemingly endless quest to embarrass him.

“It’s a certain queer kind of smile,” Crowley went on. Now he was smiling too, a particular kind of smile all his own. One that seemed to say, I’m really winding him up now.

“Oh, I don’t like your jokes,” Aziraphale said. He wasn’t smiling now. His lips had clamped down hard into what could better be described as a sulk.

Crowley rolled his eyes. Aziraphale could, of course, not see this on account of his friend’s dark glasses, but he was aware that he was being rolled at nevertheless. 

“Look, angel, I’m sorry. I’m just trying to make conversation. There is a dreadful amount of road ahead of us.”

“And lovely scenery,” Aziraphale was quick to add. “One might even call it… God’s country?”

Another roll of the eyes followed, he suspected, but this one had a distinct fondness to it. Aziraphale had the impression that even Crowley, for all his disaffected affectation, was having a hard time disagreeing with that assessment. The Pacific coast stretched out on their left; on their right, rolling hills slanted inward at acute angles, as if in anticipation of the continent on the other side. Lemony yellow grasses grew all the way up to the edge of the water in places, but higher up the slopes were blanketed in thick dark green foliage, save in spots where a sheer rock formation jutted up abruptly, interspersing the green with spires of indigo.

The colors were incredible, vibrant as a child’s crayon drawing of the sort that might have a grinning face added to the sun.

True, there had been that long black scar earlier, where the land was reduced to ash by one of the recent fires that had swept through the area. And then there had been what the young lady at the hotel had told them before they set out that morning: that they were lucky to get through. They had just cleaned up one of the not-infrequent landslides that spilled across the road. From the erosion, she had said with a contraction of her brow.

For the moment, though, they had left all those inconveniences behind them, and it was a superfluously nice day on the California coast.

“I could drive a little,” Aziraphale went on. “If you’d like a break.”

“Since when do you drive?”

“I’ve always driven. I just didn’t want to make a fuss about it before.”

“I’ll drive,” Crowley said. “You’re the navigator.”

“In that case, I believe it is customary for the navigator to choose the music?” 

They had lost KROQ once they went over the first hill past LA and they’d heard only intermittent static from the radio ever since. If either of them had thought to switch over to the AM band they could have tuned in Coast to Coast from the other side of the Sierra Nevadas and collected some excellent intel on the recently averted apocalypse. Unfortunately, neither Aziraphale nor Crowley were familiar enough with American motorway customs to do so.

“My car, my music,” Crowley said tartly.

This time, it was Aziraphale’s turn to roll his eyes, which he did with the precision of a dancer performing a pirouette. “Pish posh. It’s not your car. It belongs to the rental company. Besides, I’ve decided to get into music. Isn’t that exciting? I’ve made you something called a ‘mixed tape’ and I think you’re going to enjoy it.”

Fortunately, Crowley was in the midst of navigating a particularly tight curve and so he couldn’t protest right away. Aziraphale snatched up the aux cord and plugged it in. A moment later, a twinkling synth began to fill the car.

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” Crowley said.

“Would you give it a chance? It’s very hip right now.”

“What makes you the expert on what’s hip?”

“All the very best algorithms told me so.” Aziraphale sighed, turning the music down though not muting it. It was really a lovely song. “I just wanted to try something new. Ever since the Great Unpleasantness, I’ve had the most curious notion to find out more about humans. They do so many things that are beautiful and weird and gross. Sometimes all at once. We’re stuck with them, at least for the foreseeable future, but sometimes I feel like a scarcely know them at all.”

“Fine,” Crowley said. He was shutting down, as Aziraphale had anticipated that he would. Talking about the Unpleasantness always had the effect of a bucket of cold holy water. “But you’re supposed to do that by eating their food. Food is your thing. Music is mine.”

“You haven’t updated your listening habits in forty years.”

“That’s hardly any time at all.”

“To _them_ it is,” Aziraphale said pointedly. And then, when it seemed he had been too confrontational, he waved his hand as if to dispel the words. “Besides, I don’t see why music can’t be my thing as well. I can have two things.”

Crowley set his jaw and didn’t respond right away. For a moment, Aziraphale thought that he might be getting the silent treatment, but then he realized that Crowley was only making an effort to listen.

“It’s… agreeable,” he admitted at last. “Like a candy spaceship. What’s it called?”

“Chvrches. With a V.”

“As in, V-H-U?”

“No, no. C-H-V.”

“Oh.”

“And then the rest is spelled the way you might expect.”

“Ah.”

Again, Crowley was quiet. Aziraphale was honestly at a loss. All they had done, everything they had chanced and sacrificed just to be together, had it really been in the service of ending up here? Alone in each other’s presence. Without a single thing to say.

“The young lady at the hotel said we’re going to be driving past a winery,” Aziraphale attempted. “Why don’t we stop?”

“Might I remind you, we are working.”

So they were. In the wake of the Great Unpleasantness, there had been a noticeable uptick in supernatural activity around the globe. All manner of mythological beasts were creeping out of the woodwork and causing untold mischief. Aziraphale and Crowley had taken it upon themselves as freelance angels to keep such nonsense in check where they could.

They had gotten a taste of the hero business and weren’t quite ready to give it up yet, they had reasoned with each other. In truth, there was another motive. It had to do with idle hands, and what the Devil did with them. And then there were those unnerving silences, the ones that were getting harder and harder to fill. It was enough to send two perfectly civilized - well, one civilized and one charmingly feral - occult entities into the wilderness to track yeti scat.

“I haven’t forgotten,” Aziraphale said. “But these New World wines have such a distinctive flavor.”

“So now you like new wines as well?” Crowley was starting to sound exasperated.

“What’s wrong with new wines? Or new music, so long as it’s agreeable?”

“How long until you decide to get yourself a brand new--”

Aziraphale had the distinct impression that Crowley was about to say something they would both regret immensely. He never got the chance. It was at that precise moment that the Misikinubik slithered out of the tall grass on the side of the highway.

It was the one they had been looking for, at least Aziraphale assumed as much. There could hardly be two giant snakes about, could there? 

The Great Horned Serpent was native to the Americas. Its habitat stretched across most of the continents’ spirit realm. There were regional variations as with most cryptid species, and, according to Aziraphale’s research, this particular Misikinubik appeared to have originally been a native of Utah or Arizona. It was twenty meters long, matte brown in color, with the triangular head of an adder. True to its name, two massive curved horns, after the fashion of a mountain sheep, jutted out from the sides of its head, curling back around where its ears should have been.

Crowley slammed on the brakes, but there was really nothing he could have done to stop in time. He plowed into the side of the serpent’s massive body with a sound like a beanbag hitting a porterhouse steak. 

Aziraphale was wearing his seatbelt, but he was flung forward all the same, into the dashboard which was in the process of crumpling back into the cab. He had the presence of mind to dash together a little miracle to keep Crowley, who of course never wore his seatbelt, from being impaled by the steering column. 

Black hemmed in Aziraphale’s vision, shrinking it to a pinprick, and the sound of waves breaking filled his head. He did not think he blacked out, but certainly he was a bit topsy-turvey for a moment there. 

“Crowley?” he gasped out, the sound of the name bringing him back to himself. His hand fumbled across the seat, strewn with glass from the shattered windshield, until he found Crowley’s hand. He gripped it tight, and felt in incomparable swelling of relief when it gripped back.

A thrumming vibration filled the ruined car, shaking the metal frame. Aziraphale felt it in his throbbing head, in his back teeth which rattled in their sockets. Eyes widening, he turned to face front, where the Misikinubik was coiled, apparently unhurt and almost certainly annoyed. It lifted the tip of its scaly tail, revealing a rattle the size of a chaise lounge. It was the shaking of this that had caused the unearthly vibrations.

“Oh, dear,” Aziraphale said.

The snake began to raise its head and Aziraphale tried to crane his neck to follow it but a stab of pain in the back of his neck cut him short. He had whiplash from the crash, but injuries like those healed easily with a little nudge from the divine. It was his clothing he was worried about. He was going to be discorporated while wearing a filthy suit. Who could bear the indignity?

“Say something, idiot,” Crowley hissed next to him. He had watched the serpent lift itself as well, and he had undoubtedly seen the two thrusting fangs that slid out of its mouth like daggers, stained red as if they had been rubbed with copper. 

“Like what?” Aziraphale murmured.

“Say something nice. Corny. Say something to make it all worth it.”

Aziraphale did try. He even opened his mouth to speak, but any words that might have been forthcoming were drowned out by a deafening peel of thunder.

The sky that had, until a moment ago, been a cloudless blue, turned gray in an instant. Rain fell. It did not begin to fall as any normal rain would. Rather, one moment it was not raining and the next a downpour beat down all around them. Fat drops of water, each the size of a marble, blew through the broken windshield and drenched Aziraphale to the skin.

He heard the beating of mighty wings, displacing so much air with each stroke that Aziraphale’s ears popped from the change in pressure. The Misikinubik felt it too, for it swiveled its head around, striking at the descent.

It missed its mark, and it did not get a second chance. A moment later, the new creature landed atop it, its talons finding flesh, bearing the Misikinubik down so hard that the pavement buckled and cracked beneath it. The Misikinubik tail beat against the ground, raising such a racket that Aziraphale and Crowley clamped their hands over their ears.

Once, twice, the tail came down, and then the Misikinubik was still.

Aziraphale sat frozen for what felt like an eternity. The pounding rain and Crowley’s hissing breath were the only sounds he could hear. Through the broken windshield, he could see nothing of the second creature that had dropped down on them, only the many haphazard coils of the dead Misikinubik, sprawled across the side of the mountain.

“Get out,” Crowley whispered.

“I don’t--”

“Go,” Crowley repeated. “Get out of the car.”

Gulping, Aziraphale obeyed. It took a minor miracle to get the frame straightened out enough to open the doors, but they managed, somehow. On opposite sides of the vehicle, Aziraphale and Crowley tumbled out onto the cracked pavement.

The bird that stood astride the Misikinubik’s corpse was three stories tall. Its feathers were the purple color of approaching thunderheads. It followed the same contours as a hawk or a falcon, scaled up to massive size.

There was no doubt: It was Thunderbird. Aziraphale had known that the line between the spirit world and the natural one had gotten a little befuddled in recent months, but he’d had no idea that one of the truly ancient creatures would see fit to make an appearance.

He should have bowed, Aziraphale thought. This was, after all, a God as much as any other and a good deal older than most. He should have made some attempt at genuflection, and yet he was frozen to the spot, staring up at the massive bird that glittered with flashes of lightning from deep within its plumage.

Slowly, it turned its giant head and fixed Aziraphale and Crowley with one of its black eyes, as black as the Misikinubik’s had been and infinitely deeper. Unbroken by so much as a single gleam of light on the surface, and yet distinguished by an intelligence more profound than Aziraphale had ever imagined.

He heard the voice of the old God in his head. It spoke every language at once.

 _It’s waiting for you under the cliff_.

Thunder peeled without lightning to accompany it. Thunderbird unfurled its massive wings, beat them once, and in an instant disappeared into the storm. It took the Misikinubik with it, the serpent's limp body trailing for a split second more before it too was swallowed up by the clouds. 

In Thunderbird’s absence, the rain began to fall backwards, vanishing back into the sky. The cracked pavement repaired itself. Even Crowley and Aziraphale’s car straightened itself out until it looked as if they might get their deposit back after all. When Aziraphale moved his neck experimentally, he found his whiplash gone.

As the clouds rolled back, Aziraphale realized he felt unsteady on his feet. He gripped the open car door and held on for dear life, as if he might spiral off into nothingness otherwise. When he looked over at Crowley, he found that he had disappeared.

“Crowley?” he gasped out, feeling a not-unfamiliar panic. He ducked down, looked through the open door and out the other side.

Crowley had sat down hard in the middle of the street, as if his legs had given out and dropped him there. He glanced over, met Aziraphale’s eyes. Aziraphale could tell at once that they were not going to have a conversation about what had just happened, at least not yet.

“How far was that winery again?” Crowley asked in a voice that hardly trembled at all. “I am feeling a bit parched now that you mention it.”


	2. Chapter 2

True to form, Aziraphale nearly died and went to heaven when he saw that the winery offered walking tours. Crowley knew better than to argue when they had nearly been discorporiated and Aziraphale got like this, so he allowed himself to be dragged along with minimal grumbling. He supposed all this twee bullshit had the same soothing effect on Aziraphale as getting good and wine drunk in the middle of the day would have had on Crowley himself.

After what they had just been through, he had no idea how Aziraphale could be so fascinated by pruning techniques, but he was what he was and he didn’t know how to be anything else.

Crowley kept scanning the horizon for rain, but it was an almost oppressively sunny day. He would never concede in polite company that he had gotten a bit agitated back there, but he supposed he could admit it now, while Aziraphale was distracted. He did try to keep a stiff upper lip for the old fellow’s sake. He had seen how shakey Aziraphale had been coming up into the hills from the coast, and so he had clamped down hard on whatever jitters he might have been feeling personally. However, Aziraphale seemed to have completely recovered his poise, and now Crowley had no idea what to do with the excess of nervous energy that still jangled in his breast.

Were they even going to talk about what they had seen, he couldn’t help but wonder. He half suspected Aziraphale would find it terribly gauche to mention the elephant in the room, which just happened to be a bulldozer-sized bird in the middle of the highway.

Aziraphale had outpaced him by several meters, glancing back only sporadically before returning to his conversation with Meredith, their tour guide. She was a middle aged woman of about 50 youthful-looking years, wearing a long flowing skirt and a great deal of oversized turquoise jewelry.

She made the jewelry herself, she had volunteered without being asked, proffering the business card of her Etsy store in anticipation of what was doubtlessly going to be a clamorous inquiry. 

Crowley had lost the card already, but he had to admit it was nice jewelry, after a fashion. Everyone in this country had something like that: something they were working on, studying, planning. It was a land of endless projects and works in progress. 

Perhaps that was why he and Aziraphale had come as well. Not out of a pollyannaish duty to hunt down stray spirits and clean up the mess the almost-Apocalypse had left in its wake, but for the sake of something to do. What did they talk about when they weren’t talking about work? Better to chase down monsters than to find out that the answer to that was, nothing at all.

“What varieties of wine do you have in stock?” Aziraphale asked. He reached out to pluck at a bare branch on one of the naked vines. “It seems to be the off-season.”

“We have a lovely cabernet sauvignon from Argentina,” Meredith said. “And a few whites from New Zealand. Oh, and a new rose from just up the road in Washington.”

Aziraphale laughed nervously, as if he had said something unpardonably embarrassing. “I’m speaking of local wines, of course.”

“Nothing this year. Or last year. Or the one before, come to think of it.” Meredith waved away the inconvenient information with a flick of her hand. “Oh, but the imports are just as good. We get same-day delivery. It’s actually cheaper than making our own.”

“Forgive me for asking,” Aziraphale said. “But why operate a winery that doesn’t do what it says on the tin?”

He liked that particular turn of phrase, Crowley reflected. He’d run it well and truly to death, but you wouldn’t know it from listening to him. He said it every time as if he’d just thought of it.

“It’s this drought business. We used to be able to rely on river water. _Technically_ , it belongs to Arizona, but they hardly miss it if you just take a teensy bit for irrigation. The bigwigs in the Inland Empire suck it all up now. They’re sinking, you know.”

“Sinking?” Aziraphale echoed.

“Subsidencing, in fact,” Meredith told him in a tone that suggested she was about to share a juicy bit of gossip. “They’ve depleted the groundwater. They’re going to be swallowed up by the earth if they keep it up. A sinkhole already took the Buck Owens statue in Bakersfield.”

“Gracious!” Aziraphale gasped.

Nothing to see there, Crowley thought. He bent to inspect a black beetle that was struggling up one of the posts between the vines. A lonely little ragamuffin by the looks it. It did seem like there should have been a lot more like him in a place that was so vexingly out-of-doors, but in fact he’d hardly seen any insects since they’d set out from LA. Even the windshield of the rental car was spotless, without so much as a single splatter of bug guts.

Crowley paused, listened. He could hear nothing but the hot wind off the Sierra Nevadas and Aziraphale’s prattle up ahead. There were no bird songs, no bees. Crowley may have been an avowed indoor child, but even he knew that was wrong. Practically the only animal life they’d seen all day was a giant serpent and a bird god.

Aziraphale’s voice cut his thoughts short. “I say, crumpet!”

Pet names were still a work in progress for Aziraphale. Spotting the look on Crowley’s face as he came closer, Aziraphale frowned. “Oh, dear. Back to the drawing board?”

“I think so.”

“Let’s check in here for the night. They have cottages. I do love a good cottage.”

“Why don’t we just head back to the city? We came for the snake, and that’s taken care of. There must be a late flight to London.”

“Absolutely not,” Aziraphale said. “I’m not in any hurry to get back on the road, and I know you aren’t either. Now, they have a cottage here, and they have wine. I think that’s the best we can hope for tonight.”

“Wine from Argentina, you mean?”

Aziraphale’s eyebrows went up. He was clearly impressed that Crowley had been listening. “Oh, yes, we _should_ get the bottle from Argentina. It’s exotic, don’t you think?”

Brightening up considerably, Aziraphale started back towards the reception office. Crowley sighed. Deep down he knew that a cottage and wine wasn’t a bad deal at all, especially if he didn’t have to suffer either of them alone. Carefully, cautiously, feeling like a credulous idiot the entire time, he allowed his spirits to lift.

It was at that moment that Aziraphale turned back to face him and said the words that inevitably brought it all crashing back down.

“Crowley, we need to talk.”

*** 

Aziraphale’s important conversation was cut short by the discovery of wifi in the cottage. Whatever it was that had been so important a moment ago was promptly forgotten in a flurry of nerd nonsense. 

From the glances Crowley got over his shoulder, he could tell that Aziraphale was a few dozen tabs deep into legends about Thunderbird. The big glass of wine at his elbow remained all but untouched as he puzzled through the myriad stories from across the continent. There was no sense trying to get through to him when he was on the tail of something like this, but that didn’t mean that Crowley wasn’t going to try.

“Those old gods aren’t really from my side.”

“Oh, I knew that,” Aziraphale replied without looking up. “It’s a pernicious rumor, though.”

“A rumor spread by _your_ side.”

That got his attention. Aziraphale set both hands on the lid of the laptop and pushed it deliberately closed. “Now, just what is that supposed to mean?”

“You should know by now, angel.”

“Perhaps I do.” Aziraphale wasn’t cross with him; that was always the worst part of this argument that never seemed to end, that was eternally reborn in new forms and phases. He was never really angry about it, just disappointed. Like the cosmic father Crowley had never had. “But what I really don’t know? What I honestly cannot imagine? Is what you want me to say about it.”

“I’d settle for an admission,” Crowley said. “Or a concession if you would prefer.”

“Oh, I see. A simple admission that God is not so transcendent as we were all led to believe. Or, you would be so magnanimous as to accept a _concession_ to that nature. Well, Crowley, I am afraid it’s not going to happen. We’ve been over this before, and I thought we had reached an agreement.”

“We didn’t agree to anything,” Crowley muttered. “I just stopped arguing about it.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” 

Now Aziraphale actually was a little angry, but it wasn’t about the theological discourse. It had more to do with the fact that Crowley, even by his own estimation, had sounded incredibly petty and irritating just then. He ought to have let it drop, but if this was what it took to get Aziraphale to talk to him, then he was ready to drive it right into the fucking ground.

“Will you just listen to me? We saw something incredible today. I mean that in the most measured and dispassionate sense of the word. There’s nothing for it in your cosmology, or in mine. That’s why I’m asking you, as someone who respects your opinion, what does it mean?”

“Well, I suppose it’s--”

“You’re not allowed to say the ineffable will of God.”

“I’m sorry, then. That’s the only answer I have.”

“I hate when you say that.”

Aziraphale sniffed. “Well, I hate Bohemian Rhapsody.”

“You what?” Crowley’s jaw dropped. “The very nerve, Aziraphale…”

“I do apologize. But it just _insists_ upon itself so. You can never get a word in edgewise with that song.”

That might have derailed the whole discussion right then and there, but Crowley did have to admit that Aziraphale had a point. Instead, he took a deep breath and set the conversation back on course.

“You can apologize to Bohemian Rhapsody later. For the moment, I need you to tell me what you really think about what happened today. What’s been happening everywhere.”

Aziraphale studied his face closely for a moment, trying to discern his sincerity. Crowley was being utterly earnest, but he didn’t blame Aziraphale for being suspicious. He had lied before, after all, and he generally found it easier than telling the truth.

“The old gods are returning,” Aziraphale said at last, quietly. “Dryads, orisha, kami. And Thunderbird, who lives in the Four Directions, on the wind itself. All of them are spirits that dwell in sacred places on Earth itself, tied to the land. That’s the only thing I am sure of. That, and the fact that it all started after-- after that thing that happened to us.”

Crowley nodded, mulling it over. 

“Old gods,” he echoed. And then, abruptly, “How old?”

“Very old, I imagine, to be called that.”

“And yet you still toe the party line, don’t you? That the world was created in 4004 BC? By some human calendar that coincidentally did not come along until centuries later? It scarcely seems like any time at all.”

“That’s the Almighty’s story, and it seems that She’s sticking to it. And yet…” Aziraphale bit his lip, debating. Then, in a flurry of movement, he opened up the laptop once more. “Look. I have to show you something.”

He flipped through the tabs he had open until he came upon the one he had been looking for, and then he turned the screen so Crowley could see. It was a set of photos of black etchings on rock, a series of geometric figures that stood at starkly against the sandstone. Crowley could make out a pair of wings.

“Petroglyphs,” Aziraphale explained. “Of Thunderbird. Dated to nearly 15,000 years ago. Almost three times as old as the earth itself.”

“Another joke,” Crowley replied. As much as he was getting a thrill out of Aziraphale’s abrupt turn towards heresy, he couldn’t resist playing devil’s advocate. “Like the dinosaurs.”

“Look, I’ve explained the dinosaurs to you a thousand times.”

“I’m sorry if I still don’t see the humor.”

“A child could see the humor.”

“I think the average child would rather dinosaurs be real than God.”

Aziraphale frowned. “I suppose, but this isn’t the same. The dinosaurs are dead things. Not like the rock art; that seems alive. There’s a spark of creativity to it, don’t you think? Something very human.”

Crowley squinted at the photos. No matter how hard he looked, they still appeared as flat images to him, but he knew that Aziraphale must see something more. He would have to be very sure, to even consider bringing it up like this.

“Damascus, Syria,” Crowley said at last. “Charming town. Having a bit of a hard time lately, but people still live there. They have lived there continually since 9000 BC. That’s simple math, angel. There are decent records of all this, written down and everything. I think about it sometimes, that city standing there before we ever existed. Those people who lived there before my side, or your side, were even a twinkle in the cosmic eye. Building entire civilizations without any help from God. Laying the groundwork- the social contracts, the temples, methods of writing, all of it - for what we think of as religion.”

“It’s strange,” Aziraphale said. “A mystery, a puzzle. But…”

“But?” Crowley prompted.

Aziraphale sighed. “Oh, darling, I’m sorry. I know what you want me to say, but I won’t. I can’t. It’s not all a lie, or a mistake.”

“Because God doesn’t make mistakes, right?”

“No,” Aziraphale said firmly. “She doesn’t.”

“Then what happened to me, that wasn’t a mistake?”

Aziraphale sprang up suddenly, as if the words had bitten him. “Crowley, you know I didn’t mean it like that.”

He took a step towards where Crowley sat on the cottage bed, then thought better of it and retreated again. Then, with a resolute squaring of his shoulders, he came forward one final time.

“The mistake was yours,” he said. “Not God’s. But that’s all right. We all make mistakes.”

Crowley turned his head away. There it was, what he’d known would happen when he started needling Aziraphale. What, if he was being perfectly frank, he had even hoped for: someone to spank his bottom and tell him what a bad, unworthy creature he really was. 

A moment later, he felt the mattress depress as Aziraphale sat down. A warm hand came to rest on his shoulder -- and oh how he felt it! -- even through his layers of clothing.

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said. “But you know I adore you, right?”

“Yes,” Crowley replied mechanically.

Aziraphale sighed. “I’m afraid I’ve made a proper mess of everything. Perhaps we should have just stayed in London.”

“You’re wrong,” Crowley said. His voice was hoarse and so he squared up like Jacob and wrestled it into submission. “You think whatever you like about me. Say whatever you like. As long as it’s the truth, I can take it. I’m going to be as honest as I can with you, too. You were right to come here. Your instincts are spot on. Something is happening in the world. I can feel it too.”

Aziraphale glanced at him. “It started after we averted all the Unpleasantness.”

“Maybe,” Crowley said. “Or maybe that just cleared the air enough to let it through. Maybe the sensation is more potent because we’re here and not back in England.”

“Because the Colonies are more spiritually inclined? That’s a tad imperialist of you, don’t you think?”

“Because those old gods you’re so keen on didn’t fall out of favor all that long ago. Maybe they’re more vibrant in America, closer to the surface. In England, the Church faith only really goes back 1000 years. Before that, you’ve just got a few anemic Druids clinging to their trees.”

“If that’s true, then this has been happening all along. Right under our noses. We were just too wrapped up in ourselves to see it.”

“I think that might be the long and short of it.”

Aziraphale seemed shaken by the realization. With utmost care, as if he were handling a figure made of spun glass, he lowered his head to Crowley’s shoulder.

“Do you think you might put your arm around me? Just for a moment.”

Crowley certainly did not have to be asked twice. He snaked an arm around Aziraphale’s waist, cradling it gently. Just as he had asked for, and not a bit more. They sat like that for what may well have been a very long time, but could just as easily have been a few minutes.

“Did it say something to you?” Aziraphale asked. “Thunderbird, did it speak to you?”

Crowley hesitated before answering, though he remembered it very clearly. The message the bird had stamped into his mind was imprinted indelibly on his thoughts.

“Something about a cliff,” he said at last.

“ ‘It’s waiting for you under the cliff.’ “

“Yes,” Crowley said.

“It seemed familiar. Like I’d heard it before somewhere.”

“Yes.”

“What do you suppose it means?”

“I would imagine there’s something waiting for us. Under a cliff.”

“That was my interpretation too,” Aziraphale said. “It’s a relief, you know.”

“Were you expecting a package?”

“No, not really. It’s the fact that it’s waiting. For us. That must mean that there’s still a plan. The old watch hasn’t wound down quite yet.”


	3. Chapter 3

A serendipitous mixup on the part of the airline ensured that they flew back to London in business class. Aziraphale kept darting covert glances in Crowley’s direction; he must have known by now that Aziraphale didn’t approve of him expending miracles on personal gain, but it hardly took the most forgiving soul to know that he was just trying to be nice. Certainly, the smartest thing to do right now was drink his champagne and enjoy it.

Ten hours later, they were back once more on _terra firma_. The sky in London was overcast, which was not a surprise. What did come as a pleasant shock indeed was how much Aziraphale had missed the gloom.

It began to rain while Crowley was getting the car out of the garage, and they drove back to the reconstituted bookshop with fat drops splattering the windshield. Aziraphale had finally gotten used to having company more nights than not, though there had certainly not been a repeat performance of that memorable evening immediately after the Great Unpleasantness. 

Aziraphale remembered all of that quite well, much to his embarrassment. He could not imagine that Crowley had forgotten about it either, but, from the way he acted, the whole business may very well have slipped his mind entirely.

All at once, Aziraphale found that the glances he darted in Crowley’s direction whenever it seemed he was too absorbed in the road to notice had taken on a different cast. No, he could remember everything: the rakish cut of Crowley’s body, the flash of his elliptical eyes, the burning heat off hands…

It had all been very fresh and astonishing, and, try as he might, Aziraphale could not bring himself to regret it. He knew, though, that it would not happen again, not in this life. To transgress once, that could be forgiven, but any more than was only flouting and asking for trouble.

Crowley understood. Even Crowley, who took more delight in asking for trouble than he ever had in actually causing it, knew better than to press his luck.

“Did you want to pick the music again?” Crowley asked, so suddenly that Aziraphale nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Oh, no. That wasn’t why I -- Was I doing something?”

“You were looking like someone who wanted to play some twee music. Go on.”

Gulping, Aziraphale picked up the aux cable and plugged it in. A moment later, a swirling synthesizer filled the car.

“And this is?” Crowley asked.

“College,” Aziraphale reported.

“Ah.” After a pause, Crowley added. “It sounds a lot like the last one.”

“I suppose.”

“I thought you were getting into music?”

“I am. I’m just not that far into it yet.”

The rain was coming down steadily by the time they reached the bookshop. They found parking on the street, and by the time they had made their way back to the entrance and crowded under the striped awning out front, their clothing was soaked. Aziraphale fumbled the key into the lock; a musty stale smell emanated from the stacks as he opened the door, the consequence of leaving a room full of old books unattended for more than a week. 

Oh dear, Aziraphale fussed internally. He would have to air the place out the next time they got a spot of sunshine.

All at once, something heavy collided with him from behind.

“Pardon me,” Aziraphale sputtered, more out of habit than anything.

The weight against his back did not move, at least not away from him. Instead, it pressed subtly closer. Crowley’s hand came to rest on his waist, giving it a pat.

“A little chilly, wouldn’t you say,” Crowley breathed against his ear.

“Um?” Aziraphale replied.

“The weather, I mean. The rain.”

“Oh, yes, the rain,” Aziraphale managed to stammer in response. “It’s very wet.”

Crowley’s hand had begun to move, exploring the curve of Aziraphale’s hip. Aziraphale felt his body wind up tight beneath the exploration, but he did not try to pull away. It was only when his fingers began to creep inward, towards the juncture of his thighs, that Aziraphale reached down to stop him.

“I thought you might want to get out of those wet clothes,” Crowley murmured, seemingly undeterred by the fact that Aziraphale was pinning his hand in place as if both their lives depended on it.

“Really, now,” Aziraphale said, feeling that he had to force out every word on the edge of his breath, “It’s just a little rain.”

All at once, deliberately, so that Crowley would not for a moment think that his heart wasn’t in it, he removed the hand from his leg and stepped away, out of reach.

He didn’t turn around, couldn’t bring himself to turn around, and so he did not know what expression was on Crowley’s face. He only knew that his voice was very low, very even, when he said, “You know, I could handle it if it was because you thought there was something wrong with me. Or even if it was because you only thought you should think something was wrong. But I’m afraid it’s neither of those. You think there’s something wrong with you, don’t you?”

“Oh, Crowley…” Aziraphale said. The words hurt his throat to get out, but he knew they weren’t enough. He was going to have to say something more, issue a definitive statement on the matter. He had no idea what that could possibly be.

He knew that it wasn’t precisely divine providence, but it certainly felt like it was when, at that moment, the shop phone rang. Aziraphale dashed to answer it, moving his human body about as quickly as he ever had. He scooped the receiver up and marshaled his voice into a calm and measured tone.

“Mr. Fell speaking.”

He was aware of Crowley’s eyes on him, burning into him. Aziraphale forced himself to listen to the voice on the other end of the line.

“Anathema, it’s always a pleasure to hear from you… Why, no, we’re not busy at all… Of course, we can come over straight away… See you soon, dear.”

He hung up the phone and turned to face Crowley. Contrary to what he had expected and much to his relief, he saw that his friend’s expression was neutral, almost blank, betraying no emotion in the slightest.

“Duty calls,” Aziraphale said. “Let’s not dilly-dally.”

***

The pavement was slick with rain as they drove out of London. Crowley made a great show of watching the highway, keeping his hands on the wheel, as if he’d ever been careful on the roads before.

Aziraphale could not, for the life of him, understand what he had done to warrant such sullen treatment. After the first time - after what had happened in the wake of the Great Unpleasantness - Aziraphale had tried to brush it off with a line from a film of which he was inordinately fond:

“I have to warn you, I've heard relationships based on intense experiences never work,” he recalled saying as rakishly as possible.

He was astonished. Crowley hadn’t gotten it. Aziraphale could still see it, the way Crowley’s ever-composed expression had crumbled at the words. How he had turned, and just walked away. Nothing like Sandra Bullock at all.

Neither of them had brought it up again, not until today. All through their first jaunt up north to investigate the Loch Ness sightings, the lovely trip to the Alps on the tail of Tatlewums, and then on this most recent journey to America, Crowley had kept his hands to himself. He’d been nothing short of a gentleman, insomuch as Crowley could be said to be a gentle anything.

You couldn’t blame a fellow for making one more go of it. But could you really blame him for being reticent either, Aziraphale thought. He didn’t understand why he always had to be the one to keep them from doing something they would regret.

Anathema and Newt were still holed up in the cottage in Tadfield and trying to sort out a visa arrangement that would let them stay together. It seemed that every once in a while, a relationship based on an intense experience worked out after all.

As they drove up the lane, Anathema came out on the porch to meet them.

“I’m glad you could come. I wasn’t sure I should call. It still feels strange, on account of you two being… you know.”

Aziraphale skipped up the stairs and under the eaves quickly. The rain had let up for the moment but it was still drizzling, and the heavy, bruised sky looked ready to unleash a tempest at any moment.

“You can call us any time,” he said gallantly, reaching for Anathema’s hand. He meant only to press it decorously, but she grabbed it in her own and gave it a vigorous shake.

“Just don’t start calling us to clean out the gutters and kill bugs for you,” Crowley said, joining them on the porch.

“Newt mostly takes care of that,” Anathema replied. “He’s just so determined to be helpful and competent. I think the dork is trying to impress me.”

Though she tossed the information off casually, her lips smiled and her cheeks dimpled unconsciously. Still very much smitten, Aziraphale thought with approval. It was an eminently human thing.

Showing them inside, Anathema went on, “Should I offer you tea? I don’t know if that’s proper etiquette. Maybe tea is only for certain times of the day?”

“Any time is acceptable for tea,” Aziraphale assured her. “But we’re fine, really.”

Anathema nodded briskly, crossing that particular obligation off her list. 

“Newt’s out in the garden,” she said. “I need to tell him you’re here. What I have to show you is online, and I don’t want him coming in and knocking out the wifi again. Will you come say hello?”

“Of course,” Aziraphale said, before Crowley could moan about it.

“Thanks,” she replied. “I honestly think it’ll do him some good to see you. He doesn’t really believe what happened, or at least I think he spends most of his time trying to convince himself that he doesn’t believe it. He’s such an INTJ. We saw that little Adam boy in town the other day, though, and he turned white as a sheet, just like he’d seen a ghost. Maybe some friendly faces will help.”

Aziraphale didn’t see how he and Crowley were any less of a reminder of Newton’s crushing mortality, but he was too polite to say so. He followed Anathema outside, where they found Newton making a pile of fallen branches and assorted detritus that looked to have blown into the garden during the storm.

When he saw them, he hesitated, but then came over, taking off his glasses to wipe them on a relatively dry patch of the inner lining of his hoodie. He and Aziraphale stared at each other for what felt like a long time, with the suspicion of one sentient intelligence for another.

“Ghastly weather,” Aziraphale volunteered at last, meekly.

“We had a nasty storm blow through here,” Newton replied. He narrowed his eyes, regarding Aziraphale with suspicion, as if wondering whether he or one of his intimates was responsible for the storm. As far as Aziraphale knew, that was not the case. “I hope you two didn’t catch it on the drive up here.”

“Crowley is an excellent driver,” Aziraphale assured him.

“Very excellent,” Crowley put in. He had suddenly decided he didn’t like being left out of the conversation. “This is irritatingly unseasonable, though.”

“What do you expect?” Newton said. “It’s global warming.”

“Newt’s been getting on the internet lately,” Anathema explained.

“That’s great news,” Aziraphale said.

“Proud of you, buddy,” Crowley added.

“Don’t encourage him,” Anathema said with an affectionate roll of her eyes. “Did you know people can just post anything there?”

“Are you saying there isn’t hard science to support global warming?” Newton said.

“I’m saying I don’t like hearing about it,” she said, with very little affection in her tone now.

“It’s all a bunch of nonsense if you ask me,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale felt like this conversation might take a disagreeable turn, and they were guests here, so he was quick to put in, “No one did ask you.”

“I don’t see what makes science any more of an authority than anyone else,” Crowley went on, deliberately making as if he hadn’t heard. “The world got by just fine for thousands of years without science as we know it today. I’m not about to trust a scientist about the climate any more than I’m going to trust a king about divine right or a vicar about the rightness of eating fish on Friday.”

He was expecting a reaction, Aziraphale thought. Acting out, maybe, like a naughty child, to punish Aziraphale for his rebuff earlier. He would see that Crowley was suitably punished, Aziraphale thought huffily. He was going to do the worst thing he could think of; he was never going to mention this conversation again.

Admittedly, he was surprised when Crowley’s outburst did not garner much of a reaction from the humans either.

“It’s easy for you, isn’t it?” Newton said, very calmly, not cross at all. “You have somewhere else you can go when things get very bad.”

Anathema sighed, resenting that the very feminine job of smoothing things over now fell on her again. “Dear, don’t you think you’d better finish getting the yard cleaned up before it starts raining again? Can you move the trash barrel into the shed? If it fills with water all the ash runs out.”

“Of course,” Newton said. He leaned over, kissed her cheek. “Love you.”

“Love you more, you big strong draft horse.”

Aziraphale turned to go, but not so quickly that he did not notice the way Crowley lingered behind, staring at the vacancy left after their casual affections were over.

While Anathema led them back inside, Newton went to move a large barrel in the corner of the garden. It had been three months now since they had burned Agnes’ second book of prophecies in that very barrel, but fire sometimes did curious things, burning unevenly, forming ash cones that could spare even something as flammable as old parchment from being consumed completely.

As Newton took hold of the barrel to move it, his foot slipped and the barrel tilted dangerously, spilling a quantity of ash and cold charcoal from within. A scrap of paper dislodged, and was caught by the wind, spiraling along the garden path.

“I’m all right,” Newton called back, though he was still trying to right himself.

“Just be careful,” Anathema replied, but the words trailed off as the scrap of paper landed at her feet. She stooped, picked it up, and Aziraphale saw the color drain abruptly from her cheeks. She even wavered in place, as if strongly contemplating collapsing right there.

He started forward, but Crowley was already at her elbow, reaching out to steady her if she needed it, though she seemed to already have things well in hand.

“Is something wrong?” Aziraphale asked gently.

“No,” she said. She crushed the paper in her hand into a ball and tossed it resolutely aside. “It’s this weather. I wish the sun would come out for just five minutes.”

She started back towards the house and Aziraphale followed at her side. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Crowley bend quickly, and in one swift movement snatch up the discarded scrap of paper and slip it into the pocket of his coat.

Inside, Anathema took them into a sitting room at the back of the house, where the windows did not look out on the street, and opened her laptop. Aziraphale had expected her to bring up some obscure blog, or perhaps a site on the dark web - he had read something about the dark web - but instead she opened the browser to a website even he had seen before.

“Reddit?” Crowley asked, sounding as suspicious and unimpressed as Aziraphale felt.

“Yes, old guys. Reddit,” Anathema said with a hint of chagrin. “There’s a subreddit on here for spiritualists from all over the world. It’s usually just memes, but the other night someone posted a video.”

In a moment, she found the post she was looking for. The caption identified it as being filmed in Sakha, Siberia. Anathema turned up the volume and started the embedded video. The laptop speakers began to buzz with static - no, Aziraphale realized, not static. The howling of the Arctic wind. 

The screen was dark, streaked with gray shapes that flashed across the frame. After a moment, the camera tilted up to reveal a curtain of green light snaking through the night sky, suspended from the very rafters of heaven, creating the illusion of infinite height, stretching all the way up to the highest reaches of the universe.

“Aurora Borealis,” said a woman’s voice, heavily accented. She went on in English, enunciating each word carefully. “It’s early, too early in the year for it, but it comes when they do.”

All at once, the woman gasped, jerking the camera down so that it was once more aimed out into the darkness. Aziraphale could see a little more now: there was snow on the ground. It was snowing, as if out of a clear sky painted by the Northern Lights. Those flecks streaking across the frame were the fat flakes, whipped into a frenzy by the wind.

“They’re coming,” the woman said. “Listen.”

Aziraphale did, and in earnest. Something in the woman’s tone compelled him. He couldn’t hear anything, though, save for the roar of the wind. And he could see nothing in the black video but the blurry streaks of snow.

“Can you see them?” the woman said. “Can’t you see them all out there?”

Aziraphale could hear her willing him to see what she could, across the many miles, but there was nothing there save for an empty snowy wilderness, bathed in the cold light of the early Aurora Borealis.

After another few seconds, the video came to an end. The quiet in its wake was absolute and deep, though it only lasted a moment.

“Her camerawork leaves something to be desired,” Crowley said.

“Didn’t you see them?” Anathema asked.

“I don’t think I saw… what you wanted me to see,” Aziraphale admitted.

“Look closer, then,” Anathema replied, not without irritation. “Look through the snow. Listen past the wind. There’s something out there on the steppe.”

“Certainly, I believe you on that account, but--”

“I private messaged her,” Anathema said, cutting him off. “I told her I knew some paranormal investigators. That’s what you two are now, isn’t it? Running around after cryptids? She gave me her contact information.”

Before Aziraphale could react, Anathema had pressed the paper into his hand.

“I’ll forward the video to you,” she said. “Get in touch with her. She’s in Siberia.”

“That’s quite the trip,” Aziraphale said.

“So? Don’t you have, like, infinity money?”

Crowley snorted. “She does have us there. A rare book dealer and a gentleman of leisure, we’re absolutely rolling in funds.”

“Thank you for this,” Aziraphale said. And then, without meaning it for a moment, he added, “We’ll look into it.”

Their business concluded, Anathema showed them out. Overhead, the clouds were swirling like a vortex, and a few fat drops of rain began to fall.

“Be careful on the drive home,” Anathema said, and then retreated back inside, out of the rain.

Crowley and Aziraphale sat in the car in silence for a moment, without starting the engine.

“What did you make of all that?” Aziraphale asked at last.

“Human minds can only take so much before they start to short circuit.”

“Thank goodness, we are in agreement. I’m sure it’s a lovely place, full of many wonders, but I absolutely forbid you to drag me off to Siberia to look at the snow.”

“That’s the most comforting thing you’ve ever said to me,” Crowley replied. He reached for the key, touched it, but then let his hand fall. For a long moment, he was silent, then he said, “Listen, angel, I’m sorry about earlier. Was I a dreadful cad?”

“I would never call you that.”

“A brute then?”

“No!”

“Then what?”

“You were a--a complete asshole.” Aziraphale managed to get the word out, and then he laughed. It felt good, somehow. “But I forgive you. It’s all water under the bridge.”

Crowley turned towards him, scrutinizing Aziraphale’s profile until he was satisfied with his sincerity.

“You said a swear,” he informed him.

“I’ll say whatever I like.”

“Fine. I look forward to it.”

The mood had lightened considerably, which Aziraphale was grateful for. He wasn’t sure he could handle another 6000 years of bickering with each other. Without that matter weighing on his mind, something else occurred to him all at once.

“What did you pick up from the garden?” he asked.

Crowley, it seemed, had also forgotten the paper that had escaped being burned. He reached into his pocket to retrieve it now.

“What do you think was so distasteful?” he asked slyly.

“Heavens, I don’t know.”

“I think it’s a nude photo of Pulsifer.”

“That would hardly be all bad,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“I mean that purely in the aesthetic sense. The sense of a Hellenic appreciation of the male form, you absolute degenerate.”

“Of course,” Crowley said. Unfolding the singed paper and thrusting it in Aziraphale’s direction. “Behold, his male forms.” 

Aziraphale started to laugh at the very dreadfulness of the joke, but the sound was cut off as soon as it began. His laughter stopped and his heart dropped into his wingtips. The words on the paper before him, written in the crisp typeface of the 17th century and the exact line lengths of Agnes Nutter’s hand, were clear and legible. There was no mistaking them.

“Crowley, look,” he said.

Baffled by his sudden change in demeanor, Crowley glanced down at the paper. The color drained from his pale cheeks as he read the words. 

“It’s waiting for you  
Under the cliff.”


	4. Chapter 4

The evening he got home from Tadsfield, Crowley unearthed his winter clothes from the back of his closet. He knew already that it was only a matter of time before they followed up Anathema’s video, and so he spent most of that sleepless night on the internet, reading what he could on Sakha.

Crowley would have much preferred to let the whole matter drop. He felt he could have gotten past it all: the strange video, the final prophecy, even the words of Thunderbird, if he had half a chance. It was Aziraphale, though. For all his nattering and addle-heartedness, he couldn’t let go of a notion once it had entered his mind. He couldn’t stand the idea that something might be happening somewhere that he was not privy to.

When the time came, Crowley supposed he would find himself all caught up in it too. He might as well be prepared. 

He wasn’t about to do something so humiliating as take notes, but his memory wasn’t bad. Sakha was a huge wedge of land in the northeast of Siberia. It was a stretch of three million square kilometers, most of which ranged from unpleasant to utterly inhospitable, at least for human life. Early nomadic settlements were rudely elbowed out of the way, first by the Yakuts and then by the Russian Empire, the latter of which had busily, efficiently torn the place apart looking for diamonds and other salvage.

Things were the same everywhere, and Crowley had been around long enough that he was no longer either shocked or surprised by the tackiness of humanity. But there was just one more thing that did catch his interest, if only because of the way it reminded him of the snow streaking across the screen, the howling wind, in the video Anathema had shown them.

It seemed the last ice age had hung on for a very long time in Sakha, far past the point when the glaciers had receded most anywhere else. There was something about that place; the past just hadn’t wanted to let go.

Of course, all of that was rubbish. The Earth was only 6,000 years old, after all. No room in that timeline for Ice Ages; scarcely even enough for a proper Neolithic. All it really left room for was the dreary, inexorable march of human civilization.

At times like this, Crowley almost regretted choosing the most drearily civilized of all nations as his home. Of all the people he could have been, all the places on Earth he could have lived after Mesopotamia was no longer where all the action was, he’d had to be English. It seemed hard to believe now, but Crowley supposed there had been good reason for it at the time. Once, it had been a nice gentrifying neighborhood of Rome; now, though, it seemed merely a place where everything that was going to happen already had, and there were no new mysteries left to solve.

***

When Aziraphale did not call the next day, Crowley stopped by the bookshop, just as if he had been in the neighborhood. He knew at once, and instinctively, that he ought to keep his research about Siberia to himself. Though they were a long way from the apple business - Aziraphale’s side even had their own universities now - Crowley had long known that his friend still privately considered the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake to be somewhat suspect. Aziraphale was in no mood today for a recitation of fun facts.

While Crowley stuck to socially acceptable pleasantries, Aziraphale lurched around the shop in a daze, as if someone had moved all the furniture around. He took books of Slavic mythology off the shelves and promptly forgot where he had put them. He served what was clearly a breakfast tea in the afternoon.

Something was weighing on his mind, though he wasn’t ready to admit it yet. It would all come out in good time.

Three days later, it finally did.

Crowley’s phone rang after midnight. He let it sound three times, though it was already in his hand; it would be embarrassing for both of them if Aziraphale knew he wasn’t pulling Crowley away from something important.

“I had a dream,” his voice said on the other end of the line.

“A dream?” Crowley echoed. He was honestly baffled by the admission. “Have you been sleeping?”

“Yes,” came back Aziraphale’s primly irritated response. “I sleep for the same reason I eat. They’re both pleasant activities. Honestly, you never think, Crowley.”

“You’d think sleep would make you less testy.” Before Aziraphale could respond, Crowley quickly added. “What was your dream about?”

“That film Anathema’s friend made. I was watching it again, only this time it wasn’t just snow and static. I could see what she saw.”

“Which was what?”

“That’s just it. I don’t remember now that I’m awake.” Aziraphale paused. “Crowley, I think--”

He did not so much trail off as he did stop speaking entirely, with no intention of finishing the sentence. It was enough already. He didn’t need to finish.

“All right,” Crowley said. “I’ll book the tickets. Do you still have the phone number Anathema gave you?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale admitted. “Saya Ivanova. I’ll call her. It’s already morning over there.”

***

Crowley had prepared himself for the very edge of the world, but when, several days later, their flight landed in Yakutsk, he was relieved to find himself in a city as modern and dreary as any other.

Saya Ivanova met them at the gate. She was young and chic, dressed in leggings, a knit sweater dress, and boots with heels just shy of towering. She wore her long black hair in the fashionable Muscovite style: parted severely in the middle and with the look of having been combed only reluctantly, perhaps in the past week.

She spotted them before they saw her, and she made her way to them with a few efficient taps of her heeled boots. Aziraphale made a great show of introductions. The poor thing was dreadfully intimidated, even out of her boots Saya would have stood several imposing inches over him.

“We’ll talk in the car,” she informed them as she led the way to the exit. “There are busybodies in every crowd.”

As they left through the parking garage, Crowley was again struck by something he had first noticed while still in the air: it was a brisk and sunny day. By the tail end of November, the temperature in Yakutsk should have been below freezing for at least a solid month, with drifting snow.

Crowley did spot a few streaks of grayish snow in places that got a lot of shade, but most of what there was on the ground was mud, as if spring had come, unwelcome and premature, to melt the frozen land.

“Lovely weather you’re having,” Crowley remarked as Saya took them out onto the highway that cut through the middle of the city. He watched her hands as she drove, grudgingly admiring the way she handled the vehicle, as if poised in anticipation of ice that was no longer on the road.

“You noticed,” she replied. Her English was flawless, natural. He might have done the polite thing and spoken to her in Russian, but Crowley was glad they could do things this way. His tongue was used to the old phonemes by now.

Saya continued, “It’s never been this warm before. Since they started keeping records, there’s never been a day above freezing after November 10th. The snow comes early, and then it stays for months, locking in the cold.”

“People seem to be enjoying the reprieve,” Aziraphale put in. He had noticed a pair of teenagers in short sleeves, affecting an imperviousness to chill. It was a trait common to young men everywhere, much like pretending hot sauce made food more edible.

“You don’t understand,” Saya said with a shake of her head. “The climate isn’t just something to be endured or suffered. It is this place, why it’s here. Without the frozen ground to hold it, this whole city would sink, or be swept away by a mudslide. Humans can live in inhospitable places like this - they can even live comfortably - but that’s because humans are able to adapt. Look at that.”

She jabbed a finger out the window of the car, indicating a house built on wooden stilts, elevated above the ground.

“They’re all like that. It keeps them warmer. The apartment buildings all have thick foundations, too, lifting them above the permafrost. But the land can’t do things like that, at least not without millions of years to think it over. This weather is unnatural, and something cataclysmic will happen if it continues.”

There was a moment of silence in the car. As Crowley preferred an aloof disinterest in all situations, he often had trouble telling if he was in the presence of a passionate young human or an absolute raving lunatic. This was one such time.

Aziraphale spoke first. “Anathema said you were a shaman. You must have a deep connection with the land.”

“A shaman?” Saya wrinkled her nose. “Listen, I may have exaggerated my credentials a little on the Reddit post. I just thought those cat ladies and tarot nerds would be more likely to listen. I’m really a paleontologist, at the University of Moscow. I was born here, though. I know that something in the land has changed since I was a child.”

Aziraphale’s brow furrowed. “We’ve seen certain things as well. Disruptions in nature.”

“In your capacity as paranormal investigators?” Saya said, the corner of her mouth making a shape that suggested a smile.

“We might have exaggerated out credentials, too,” Crowley said. “But we are as qualified as anyone.”

“That depends,” Aziraphale put in quickly, giving Crowley a sharp look. “On why precisely we’re here. Your video was a little unclear, I’m sorry to report.”

“I figured that out when I was being downvoted into oblivion,” Saya replied. “There is something. It’s just hard to explain. You have to see it for yourself. I shot the footage just outside of town, but since the temperature has gone up, I haven’t seen them. I think they’re migrating. Up north, on the tundra, I think that’s where they’ve gone.”

“What are they?” Aziraphale asked.

“The ghosts,” Saya said. “The ones that live in the ice.”

***

Nothing about taking a rattletrap Jeep 300 roadless miles through the freezing Arctic winter was what Crowley would consider appealing. If even his thoroughly uncivilized soul balked at the prospect, he could hardly imagine what Aziraphale might be feeling. To Crowley’s surprise, it was with a complete lack of hesitation or complaint that Aziraphale agreed to Saya’s offer to take them north.

He thought there was something to the stories of ghosts on the ice. Well, good for him. Crowley had a sneaking suspicion that the real reason for all this pageantry was that it allowed him to avoid a particular difficult conversation that had been a long time in coming. If not even the almost-Apocalypse had been enough to get him to talk to Crowley about what he really wanted, what he really felt about this connection they shared, then there probably wasn’t much that could convince him. After 6000 years, he wasn’t about to break any old habits.

Crowley had always known this about him, and he supposed he had implicitly accepted it when he’d fallen in love with the idiot whatsoever many millennia back. Still, this was not a sustainable ecosystem. Something had to give way if it was going to continue to support life. And Crowley fully intended to chase every damn spirit off the plane of existence if that was what it took for them to get a moment without distractions.

They weren’t going to get any time alone on this particular excursion, not with Saya behind the wheel of the Jeep, filling the silences with a history lesson about Sakha.

Crowley might have tuned her out; he had never been one for doing the required reading. Yet her voice kept drawing him back, so that he was forced to pick up a bit of the story here or there. She loved this country, she had told them at the outset, and back in Moscow she had so few opportunities to explain that to people.

The idea to present herself as a shaman had come from her grandmother, Saya confessed. She had been a historian in the 1940s, and her area of expertise was the native Yakutsk. Back then, the official Party line had been that the cultures of Siberia were backwards, unsustainable. They were superstitious and inefficient ways of life, destined to be burned away by the purging fire of Communism.

Anna Rustamova, the historian, was careful to adhere to the accepted narrative in her writings, for she knew as well as anyone what happened to dissenters. But she reserved a secret corner of her intellect for heresy. It was here that she nursed the idea that would come to obsess her: could it really be said there was much difference at all between science and shamanism? Both were, after all, based on observation of the natural world, and on converting what had been seen and sensed into useful knowledge. 

Only the source of new information was different, and, when one was honest with oneself, didn’t it make more sense to attribute realizations and epiphanies to the wisdom of ancient ancestors than to the workings of one’s own brain? It was pure ego and vanity to believe that one thought reality into existence, rather than that it had always been there, waiting to be rediscovered.

Under Khruschev, travel loosened up a bit and Anna Rustamova got a grant to study the Yakutsk in their native homeland. For much of her career, she had only been able to view Siberia from the comforts of Moscow, a sad irony that was not lost on her, for she was well aware how many would say the exact opposite.

However, when she arrived, she found little left of the old ways waiting for her. The reindeer herds had been penned up in commercial farms, and the great emptiness of the steppe had become a minefield of barbed wire. Native Russians, freshly released from the gulag and with no hope of ever finding a way back home, had flung down ugly cities as if to spite the land that had imprisoned them.

There was little left to aid her research, but Anna Rustamova stayed in Siberia, as if waiting for something that would one day return.

“You must take after your grandmother,” Aziraphale surmised.

“I do,” Saya replied, “But not in the way you’re thinking. When I was growing up, I resented her for hanging around here. If she hadn’t, then I might have been born somewhere much more glamorous, much less dull. I admired her work as a scholar, though. I could very much see myself doing something similar: making great discoveries, obliterating all the lies and hypocrisies of the world with the undeniable truth of my research. It certainly didn’t hurt that it got me out of Siberia, but something kept calling me back here too, I guess.”

She laughed abruptly. “Paleontology, of all things. What did I think was going to happen? That I would unearth an intact t-rex - feathers and all - from the sewers of St. Petersburg? No, once I made that particular decision, the choice to be here was decided for me.” 

This region of the Earth had teemed with life during the last ice age, Saya went on to tell them. Practically all the recognizable animals had amassed here in herds of tens of thousands: mammoths, aurochs, rhinoceros. There were predators, too. Cave lions, giant polar bears, massive hyenas with shaggy matted coats.

All of them had thrived in their time and then died, leaving behind a handful of fossils and a great deal of hydrocarbons, which was where their true value now lay.

It was, in a roundabout way, the ruthlessly extravagant use of those hydrocarbons that had brought Saya here to Siberia. The world was warming, of that there was no doubt, and the ice that covered the vast and empty tundra was melting. There were still some of those ancient animals out there, buried under millennia of snow and frost. The corpses did not decay, did not even mummify. It was too cold for that. 

As the frozen ground thawed, it would occasionally vomit forth one of these perfectly preserved carcasses. It did not happen frequently, but it occurred more often than most people thought. Saya had been there when they unearthed a mammoth with its final meal still in its stomach, when the remains of an ancient avalanche spit out two cave lion cubs, when a prehistoric horse with blood still in its veins appeared one day in the snow as if by apparition.

The intense cold preserved the specimens; it was a process that was well understood by now. And yet, Saya confessed, she had begun to think that there was more to it than that. Every time she saw the face of one of those extinct creatures, pulled tight into a natural death mask, she saw not only a scientific discovery to be studied, but also an emissary sent by the Earth itself, to caution them or to warn them.

At first she had dismissed such thoughts as fanciful and illogical, unsuited to a scientist. Now, though, she had seen those things out on the ice, and she was beginning to suspect she alone had gotten it right.

“What things?” Crowley tried again, though he did not expect an answer any more detailed than the last time he had asked.

Saya did not disappoint him on that account. “You’ll see them soon. I know they’re out here.”

***

Night came on quickly as they headed north. The sky seemed to go from clear pale blue to leaden gray in an instant. Saya pulled the Jeep off the ice track, then planted hazard lights for twenty meters on either side. There weren’t a lot of vehicles out here - in fact, they had not passed another car for hours - but she had no intention of being involved in an accident between the only two things on the road for a hundred miles in any direction.

With the brisk efficiency of someone who had done this many times with male colleagues in tow, Saya folded down the back seats of the Jeep and made a space for Crowley and Aziraphale to sleep. She reserved the front seat for herself, with a buttress of supply boxes between the two. Aziraphale kept trying to explain that she had nothing to be concerned about from the two of them, but Saya seemed more irritated by his bluster than comforted. Indeed, she had most certainly heard the like plenty of times before.

While she got out the camp stove and began to prepare dinner, Crowley wandered off into the snow drifts. He meant it to look like he was going to urinate, which he had gathered humans considered either a great treat or a dreadful inhibition to do outdoors. He wondered if he could manage it if he tried. As far as he knew, no angel or demon had undertaken that particular experiment before, but if Aziraphale could have sleeping _and_ eating while at the same time deciding that sex was off the table, Crowley would have to take his base human pleasures where he could get them.

This particular foray into the mortal experience never got past the contemplation stage, though, for it was at that moment that he heard Aziraphale’s puffing little breaths approaching from behind him. He was not winded - could not be winded - but he made a great show of it all the same.

For a moment they stood without speaking, looking out at the white vastness of the tundra as night came on. The sky was almost entirely dark now, but the snow retained a faint phosphorus all its own. The sky was immense and the land as thin and flimsy as a single layer of silk by comparison. It seemed to stretch on forever, as if there had never been any other land before and never would be again.

“Is it all you imagined?” Aziraphale asked at last.

Crowley snorted. “It was your idea to come.”

“I know,” Aziraphale replied. “I don’t regret it. In fact, I believe her.”

Crowley was quiet for a moment. “It’s a bit chilly, don’t you think?”

“London is chilly, too,” Aziraphale said with a shrug.

“Not like this.” 

Crowley held himself still for a long moment, feeling the Arctic cold burn on his cheeks. It was a crisp, bright frostiness, as if they were bathed in the full light of a midday sun that burned cold instead of hot. It did not sink into the skin like the damp misery of London, but it was absorbed into the body through the lungs. Crowley could feel the cold moving inside of him with every breath he drew.

Someone better traveled and less cynical than him had once said that some places were just places, where you might come and go as you pleased, but other places kept a piece of you when you tried to leave them so that you could never completely come home. Crowley had long been resistant to that particular piece of doggerel, but he was beginning to feel that, for the first time in his long and disconsolate life, he understood.

He turned to Aziraphale - fully intending to say something maudlin and idiotic - but he paused when he caught sight of his face. Aziraphale’s pale skin and hair were bathed in a greenish glow.

“You have something on your cheek,” Crowley said lamely

Aziraphale reached to scrub at it, but the faint luminescence transferred to his hand. Crowley looked up, and he found the source. The sky had been hung with curtains of green and pink, draperies of light that stretched on for miles in all directions. The Aurora Borealis shown down on them, like a rainbow without all the baggage.

“That’s remarkable,” Aziraphale said mildly.

Crowley felt that a bigger reaction was in order, but he could not think of a single thing to say either. They stood there for a long time, long enough for Crowley to think that this was far too much time for a standard piss. Eventually, the Aurora began to dim. The northern edge was eaten away by an approaching shadow. As it drew closer, Crowley realized that it was a thick mass of clouds rolling in.

“Looks like snow,” he said.

Aziraphale glanced towards the approaching front, and then together they turned and walked back to the Jeep.

***

The storm came on as they were turning in for the night. It brought a deluge of snow - thick fat flakes each the size of Crowley’s thumbnail - and a howling wind that whipped the Jeep so hard that it rocked on its tires. The temperature dropped thirty degrees in an hour, but Saya placed a portable heater atop the dashboard to keep the inside of the vehicle at a tolerable temperature

Crowley and Aziraphale contorted into the makeshift bed in the back, somehow managing not to touch. When it seemed that Saya had drifted off at last, Crowley rolled over to press up against Aziraphale’s side.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked.

“I don’t always sleep,” Aziraphale said. He pushed his elbow back into Crowley’s ribs, but he did not seem to be trying to shove him away. Instead, he was only confirming the solidness of him, reassessing his familiar shape.

“We ought to do something to pass the time.”

“I hope you’re nothing thinking of anything crude.”

“I was going to suggest Twenty Questions.”

“Might I remind you that our generous host is right there,” Aziraphale said. He didn’t sound irritated, only thoughtful and circumspect.

Crowley glanced towards the front seat. He couldn’t see much, but he did not think Saya had moved. “She can’t hear anything with the wind blowing like this.”

“Besides,” Aziraphale went on, as if Crowley had not spoken. “I thought I told you, that bit of recreation was a one-time deal. We had just averted the Great Unpleasantness. Neither of us were entirely in our right minds.”

“But we always thought we’d be able to stop that nasty business from happening. We were counting on an aborted Apocalypse, if you recall, and so when we actually managed it there wasn’t much of a surprise. This, on the other hand, is the real surprise. You can’t tell me you ever imagined we would find ourselves in a place like this. Right now, this moment, is the one-time deal if you ask me.”

“I didn’t think of it like that,” Aziraphale said in airy voice, as if Crowley had done nothing more than suggest the answer to a crossword puzzle. Slowly, he turned over so that they were facing each other and Crowley’s arm was draped across his waist. “I suppose I will have to give your theory some thought.”

Crowley’s heart skipped a beat. He half-thought that Aziraphale was only testing him, and all at once he was speaking too fast, his voice pitched low to match the roar of the wind.

“I don’t want to pressure you, angel. I’ve always been happy just being friends, if that’s really what we are. You don’t have to do anything if--”

Aziraphale kissed him. It was so unexpected that Crowley kept talking for a moment, the words crushed into an incomprehensible _mrph-mrph_ against his lips. When he had finally gotten his bearings, his hands were quick to latch on, clutching at Aziraphale’s arm, his shoulder.

“You’re always jerking me around,” he accused hotly once they had broken apart.

“I know, I’m so mean and inconsistent. Can you forgive me?”

“On one condition,” Crowley replied. He leaned back for another kiss, and his hands were far from chaste, wandering under the blankets, making their way up and under Aziraphale’s clothing until they found flesh that was warmer than anything in a thousand miles.

Aziraphale grabbed hold of his wrist before he could make much progress. He whispered, “now that is too forward. We’re not even alone.”

“The wind’s picking up,” Crowley replied. “Listen.”

Aziraphale tilted his chin back slightly to do just that. Outside, the roar had increased to a steady, sustained drone that pounded against the Jeep from all directions. It was definitely louder than before, more intense.

“Something is wrong…” Aziraphale whispered, his voice taking on a strange cast. Crowley thought that he must be winding up to issue another excuse or protest, and he steeled himself to pull away.

But then, he noticed it too: The Jeep was no longer rocking back and forth. It was almost perfectly still, as if the gusts that had buffeted it earlier had died down entirely.

“That’s not the wind,” Crowley said abruptly, sitting up so fast that his head cracked against the roof of the Jeep.

A moment later, Aziraphale knelt up beside him, straightening his rumpled clothing. In the front seat, Saya began to stir a well. All at once, she bolted upright.

“It’s them,” she gasped, fumbling along the dashboard until she found the switch for the headlights. She threw on the high beams, bathing the tundra in light.

At first, it seemed that there wasn’t much to see. Just the inky black sky, without a single light in it, the Aurora Borealis only a memory now that the clouds had blotted it out. Snow still fell heavily, the thick flakes dancing in and out of the light, creating white streaks and patterns. Then, all at once, Crowley spotted it. Out there, beyond the vertical lines of the snow, something was moving. It was as white as the frozen soil, but it kept shifting, mutating in form. It was a long, low line that seemed to stretch across the entire horizon, floating just above the ground.

As if in a trance, Crowley opened the door to climb out.

“Stay close,” Saya hissed.

Aziraphale said, “Be careful.”

Crowley stepped out, the fresh snow crunching beneath his feet. He could still hear that low, throbbing roar on all sides, but now he knew beyond any doubt that it was not the wind. It sounded like a sustained rumble of distant thunder, and like thunder it seemed to shake the ground.

He squinted through the snow at that confounding serpent of ivory white. His eyes began to adjust, and then he could see that what had once appeared to be an unbroken line was actually made up of many forms, moving in unison.

Aziraphale got out of the Jeep and stood at his side. Crowley glanced over at him, and when he looked back the illusion abruptly broke. He realized it then, all at once, what he was looking at.

He could see the forms of animals. Thousands of them, perhaps millions, all the same uniform shade of spectral white. They were all moving in the same direction, in a tightly-knit migration. Among them he could make out the shapes of horses, oxen, deer, occasionally broken by a larger elephantine form.

Even at this distance, Crowley could see that they were big, bigger than they should have been, the size of the ancient creatures that had once walked this land.

Suddenly, a shrill and piercing scream broke through the dull droning of hoofbeats. One of the creatures came tearing out of the darkness at a gallop. It was much closer to the Jeep than the others, and it passed almost directly in front of them so that, for a moment, it was illuminated by the headlights.

A moment was enough for Crowley to see it in full. The creature had the form of a deer, though scaled up to massive proportions. It stood three meters tall at the shoulder, and it had a rack of antlers as wide as a two-lane street. Though it moved like a living creature, it was clear that it was anything but. Beneath its thick shaggy coat, spectral bones shone through. In the shadow of its imposing antlers, the deer’s head had the look of an animate skull.

It snorted loudly as the light shone on it, a sound so fierce and wild that Aziraphale let out a gasp and Crowley flinched away. He reached down between their bodies and seized Aziraphale's hand so tightly he could feel the shape of the bones. 

Abruptly, the dead deer tossed its head in their direction. Its boney nostrils quivered as if scenting the air, and then it pivoted on its hooves and went to join the other ambulatory skeletons in the column.

All those creatures from the past, Crowley though, tasting copper in the back of his throat. All those animals that had once been living and now were dead. Saya had been right; the ice had spat them out in a massive herd. They had all come back, and Crowley could not, for the life of him, imagine why.


	5. Chapter 5

After what could only have been a long time standing out in the snow, Aziraphale realized that they were still maintaining the pleasant fiction that they were human, and as such they ought to have been frozen through by now. He nudged Crowley, indicating that he should get back into the Jeep, if only for propriety’s sake.

The stream of specters were still coming. Occasionally, their numbers thinned and it seemed that the procession might finally come to an end, but in time they began to mass together again and the march continued. Even when Aziraphale was settled once in the back of the vehicle, he could hear them moving out there, beyond the icy windows. No one spoke, which left him, by his nature, struggling to find some pleasant inanity to fill the space. He could not think of a single thing.

Saya, at least, ought to have had a few choice words for them. They had not believed her - not really - but now she was vindicated. However, instead of speaking, she just sat stock still and alert in the front seat, listening. Occasionally, a dry cough broke the silence, though she did her best to muffle the sound in her sleeve. Aziraphale had never been so thankful to hear a human suffering through the embarrassing inconvenience of getting sick. As long as she kept reminding him that she was awake, there was no way that Crowley would try another stunt like the one Aziraphale had very nearly let him get away with.

Crowley still labored under the impression that Aziraphale refused him out of naivete and prudishness, which was perhaps what had preserved him and sustained their friendship for this long, but Aziraphale was not nearly as stupid as Crowley seemed to think. He knew exactly what Crowley, with his brazen looks and insistent caresses and innuendos, expected from him. What’s more, he knew the hurt it caused him when Aziraphale refused. In fact, he knew damn near everything, save why he could not bring himself to acquiesce to Crowley’s very reasonable demands.

He’d done so gamely enough once before. In the aftermath of the Great Unpleasantness, they had slipped on their overwhelming feeling of relief and tumbled headlong into bed together. Though it was the one human vice that Aziraphale had never contemplated, but in the heat of the moment it had seemed the proper thing to do.

In truth, he remembered very little of their tryst. The stress of the narrowly-averted calamity had shot his memory of those days full of holes. He assumed the time they had spent together had been nice enough, though, since it generally was. He just didn’t know why they had to be in such a rush to repeat it.

He suspected that Crowley thought it a uniquely subversive act for an angel, fallen or otherwise, but Aziraphale could not bring himself to agree. For the two of them, there was nothing more unnatural about love making than there was about eating, or sleeping, or listening to dreadful music, or any one of a thousand other human habits they had picked up over the millennia.

If they were ever going to do that thing again, it was not going to be because Crowley wanted to extend a petulant middle finger towards God. Nor was it going to be on account of them both reeling from a shock. No, he would only allow it a second time if he could be sure it was for the right reasons - the one true reason - because he was in love.

It sounded dreadfully old-fashioned in this day and age. Aziraphale knew that as well as anyone, and yet he had been there when they had invented the thing so he might be permitted a little nostalgia. Naturally, there had been other factors in play, even back then. Lust was the primary one, but that was something Aziraphale could not feel. That left only love for him, which was fortunately something he had in abundance.

He loved God, and he loved Man. He just couldn’t figure out if he loved Crowley too. 

Aziraphale turned on his side to look at Crowley’s profile, shrouded in shadow. If he could just catch him unaware, maybe he would be able to figure it out.

“I’m awake,” Crowley said at once when he felt Aziraphale’s eyes on him.

“I’m glad,” Aziraphale admitted. “I think we might have bitten off a bit more than we can chew this time. I’m sorry I dragged you out here.”

“I wanted to come.” Crowley sounded annoyed, as if he did not approve of Aziraphale taking the blame onto himself as a matter of course. “I don’t know about you, but I’m glad I’m finally having some proper fun.”

“America was fun,” Aziraphale said softly. “The winery.”

“You’re right, that was fun. It seems a long time ago now.”

“It wasn’t that long.”

Crowley seemed to remember all at once that they were not alone, and he lowered his voice so that it was subsonic to the sounds that were not quite hoofbeats outside. “Cards on the table, angel. Are those things yours, or mine?”

The question gave Aziraphale pause. 

“We wouldn’t know,” Crowley pressed on. “If they were planning something, we’d never know. Another Apocalypse could plow right over us, and we’d never be any the wiser.”

“I don’t think there’s any need to jump to conclusions,” Aziraphale said.

“Don’t pretend it doesn’t bother you, being cut off like this. You always fancied yourself such a good boy, it must eat at you to be cast out.”

“Heavens…” Aziraphale murmured.

Crowley turned away. “Sorry.”

“You don’t have anything to apologize for,” Aziraphale said. “Except, perhaps, your timing. We’ll talk about this later.”

“Sure,” Crowley said.

He was still upset, even sullen. He couldn’t hide it from Aziraphale and so he didn’t bother trying. Quietly, without fanfare or fuss, Aziraphale reached over and set a hand over his. He felt Crowley tense up, as if to pull away, but in the end he stayed where he was, neither accepting or rejecting the overture.

“To answer your question,” Aziraphale said, “I don’t think that they’re divine or demonic, but rather organic.”

“I didn’t know there was a third option,” Crowley replied.

“There must be many other options, if even we have found one.”

He heard Crowley catch his breath, but he did not try to speak. In the front seat, Saya sneezed, then cursed softly, then popped open the glove compartment to look for tissues.

Aziraphale patted Crowley’s hand. This time, his fingers bucked up slightly into his touch. 

“Quiet down for now,” Aziraphale said. “I’ll have some things to say to you very soon. It’s about a topic I have been putting off for too long already. I will tell you everything, but not right now. We’ve found something truly remarkable, in case you hadn’t noticed, and I don’t want to spoil it by being material.”

“ ‘Living in the moment means letting go of the past and not waiting for the future,’ “ Crowley quoted vaguely.

“Pardon me?” Aziraphale was thoroughly scandalized

“I run a few wellness accounts on Twitter,” Crowley replied.

“Oh, do go to sleep, my dear. Or at least pretend to.”

Even in the darkness, he saw it: the hard lines of Crowley’s mouth relaxing into a smile. “Of course. Whatever you say.”

***

Dawn broke late and cold the next morning. The light glittered on the fresh snow, giving the landscape a uniform metallic sheen. Overnight, the wind had died down to a light breeze, but the snow bore the shape of the gusts that had swept over the tundra the night before. Sharp ridges and wave shapes rippled across the land, as far as Aziraphale could see, in every direction.

Saya slipped out of the Jeep as soon as it was light. Aziraphale heard her sneeze twice in rapid succession before she shut the door behind her and muffled the sound. He would have liked to stay inside a while longer, where it was quiet, but he could hardly leave the poor girl to suffer in the grip of the grippe.

He straightened out his clothes and pulled on his boots, and then he glanced in Crowley’s direction. His eyes were closed, head turned slightly to the side, as if he really was having a go at sleeping. By the look of it, he was a natural. The hard lines around his mouth had relaxed, and he looked untroubled, all the demons inside at last at rest.

Satisfied, Aziraphale climbed out and into the snow, where he promptly sank in up to his knees.

“Gracious,” he muttered, extracting himself from the deep drift. 

Saya was crouched in the snow a few meters away. She glanced up briefly and waved Aziraphale over before turning back to study a patch of ground intently. Coming to her side, Aziraphale saw what had caught her attention: a single hoofprint was imprinted in the snow. The edges were crisp and sharp, more like a stone fossil than a transitory print.

It was huge, so big around that Aziraphale could have fit his entire clenched fist into it. There was no trail surrounding it, just the single print in the middle of a snowfield, as if it had been burned there.

“Nothing like this was left behind before,” Saya said. She pulled out her phone and snapped a picture of the print. 

Aziraphale shivered. Though the spectral creatures had vanished with the sun, they seemed somehow more real now in the harsh light of day. 

“You were right,” he told Saya, because he thought she would appreciate hearing it. “There is something unnatural out here. I wish I could tell you what it was.”

Saya looked up again at the words, granting Aziraphale a good look at her face for the first time. My, she did look dreadful this morning. Her eyes were rimmed in red and there was a sheen of sweat at her temples in spite of the chill in the air.

“Forgive me for saying so,” Aziraphale said, “but you seem to be coming down with something.”

“It’s just the cold air,” Saya assured him. “Besides, you don’t really think I’d miss this, do you?”

“At least let me make you a nice cup of tea.”

Reluctantly, Saya left the print in the snow behind and pushed to her feet. She swayed a little, as if standing up had made her lightheaded, but then she pressed the heel of one hand to her temple to rally herself. That same dry cough shook her again as she followed Aziraphale back and then sat down on the running board of the Jeep.

“I’m sorry if I get you sick, too. In close quarters, it can’t be helped.”

“I have a very strong constitution,” Aziraphale assured her. He got the electric stove out of the back, and the kettle, and scooped up snow the way he had seen her do the night before so that he could have water to boil.

“Those things last night,” he mused. “They were the same as what you saw before, weren’t they?”

“Yes,” Saya replied. “Though not so many of them close to the city.”

“Have you ever heard of anything like them?” Aziraphale asked, and then, in response to a curious look, he was quick to add, “In the folklore, I mean.”

“I knew what you meant,” Saya told him. “But, no, there’s nothing like that in any of the local stories. I think it’s obvious what they are, though. Ghosts of the Pleistocene, the last ice age. They inhabited these lands for millions of years. There must be hundreds of thousands of them buried in the permafrost out here, countless billions that lived and died. For some reason, they’re all coming back now.”

“The warm temperatures,” said a voice from behind Aziraphale. He turned around, surprised to see that Crowley had gotten up and perched himself in the open door of the Jeep at some point, clearly been listening intently. “The melting permafrost.”

“I think so, too,” Saya said. “It’s remarkable, but I’m hardly surprised. There are things buried out here that we do not know - cannot know - and so we cannot be prepared for them when they come to light.”

“Are you saying these are frozen ghosts?” Aziraphale asked.

“Not the ghosts,” Saya said, waving the word away as if it pricked at her utterly scientific mind. “Forget the ghosts.”

“That’s easier said than done…”

“A few years ago, some of the local reindeer herders mentioned their livestock dropping dead at an alarming rate. Then the people who had eaten the meat of a seemingly healthy animal got sick too. A colleague of mine traced the source of the infection: anthrax. But not as we know it. It was virulent, fast-acting, even by anthrax standards. At first, he thought it was a mutated strain, but then he learned that recently the locals had found a large number of frozen reindeer carcasses unthawing in the snow.”

She paused to glance at them, and seemed annoyed that Crowley and Aziraphale were utterly clueless as to what she was trying to tell them.

“It wasn’t a new strain, it was an ancient one. The bodies of the Pleistocene reindeer infected the modern ones, with a strain of the disease that had not been seen on the earth in 10,000 years. No one stood a chance.”

“The outbreak was contained because the location was so remote,” Aziraphale surmised. “But next time it might be somewhere densely populated.”

“Next time?” Saya said. “Next time, it might not be anthrax. It might be something much worse. Something we could never have imagined.”

Crowley frowned, taking it all in. “The humans… I mean _us humans_ would have no natural resistance. If it spread quickly enough, this disease could destroy, well, everything.”

He stole a glance in Aziraphale’s direction, making sure that Aziraphale had noticed how clever and helpful he could be. “It makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“It’s not a sound theory,” Saya said. “It lacks scientific rigor. But I would be lying if I said the thought did not keep me up at night. Even more than those things out there on the ice do.”

She coughed, and Aziraphale pressed a mug of tea into her hands with not a little urgency. Saya took a sip, but she seemed to have no taste for it and the rest of the cup quickly went cold in her hands. Aziraphale passed another cup to Crowley, but it got scarcely more attention than the first.

“In times of crisis, successful species adapt to the new environmental conditions. The megafauna of the Pleistocene went extinct during the last major shift in climate. Maybe this is another attempt, a chance to make things stick this time.”

“Then they’re just animals,” Aziraphale said. “Only they have forgotten that they ought to be dead. I think we should follow them, find out where they’re all going.”

“No,” Crowley said. Again, Aziraphale was startled by the sound of his voice, by the grave seriousness in his tone. “If they’re really animals, then where they’re going is obvious. They’re off to do whatever animals do. If you really want answers, then you’ll look wherever they’re all coming from instead.”

***

They drove through the morning, following the specters back towards their source. There was little by which to navigate, save for the fact that the image of the migration had been stamped indelibly in all their minds. They could have traced it with their eyes closed. Occasionally, Crowley, who had taken the front seat, would spot another footprint branded in the snow, its sharp clean edges penetrating almost down to the soil as if it had blazed, white hot, where it touched the ground.

Each time they came across one of them, Saya would climb out of the Jeep to photograph it, placing one of her own booted feet in the frame for scale. However, as the day wore on, she became slower to spring into action. She coughed in long jags, that left her struggling to hide that she was out of breath.

By noon, it was clear that she could not go much further.

Fortunately, even the wildest reaches of the tundra were dotted with towns, each of which had a modest yet functional medical center as one of its relics of Soviet expansion. They left Saya with the competent young doctor on staff, who moved her into a private room that looked more like a retro living room than a hospital.

Aziraphale saw her in. Crowley trailed them part of the way, then abruptly retreated to wait outside. It was futile to tell him that he was being rude; he had already made up his mind. Aziraphale had never seen him like this before. Even on the cusp of the Great Unpleasantness, Crowley had maintained an affected aloofness, as if the only unforgivable sin in his universe was acting as if he cared too much.

He cared about this, though. Those things they had seen the night before had gotten inside him somehow. It was not that Aziraphale did not feel the same urgency, but he had other responsibilities. 

He made sure that Saya was settled, but before he could take a seat himself she looked at him with shadowy eyes and said, “Don’t even think about it. Just go.”

Aziraphale frowned. “If this is about Crowley, rest assured that he can wait.”

“It’s not about him, but he does have the right idea. I’ll be all right here, and you two will be fine out there. Just follow the GPS.”

“Whatever is happening out there, it was yours first,” Aziraphale replied. “We didn’t come out here to take anything from you.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, it isn’t getting any colder out there,” Saya said. “Those creatures disappeared the last time the snow melted, and they will again. Go, and then come back and tell me what you find.”

“If you’re sure?”

Before she could reply, Saya began to cough. Aziraphale stepped towards her, but she waved him off. After nearly half a minute, the fit finally slowed enough for her to catch her breath in a great sucking gasp.

“I’m not thrilled about the idea,” she said in a raw voice. “But I feel terrible. Just get out of here and let me get some proper rest.”

It seemed the matter had been settled. Aziraphale was still reluctant to leave her, though leave he did, relieved he had been given permission. 

As he reached the door, he heard Saya’s voice once more behind him. “Mr.Fell.”

He frowned, for he could not remember ever telling Saya his real name, but he turned back all the same, with as benevolent an expression as he could muster. “Yes, dear?”

To his surprise, he found that Saya had turned away. She was looking out the window at the snow, her face obscured by the curtain of her hair. When she spoke again, Aziraphale had the curious impression that her voice was not actually coming from her lips. 

“It’s waiting for you, Aziraphale. Under the cliff.”

His blood turned to ice, as if his heart had suddenly frozen in his chest.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he responded breezily. “Feel better soon.”

This last was delivered from the hallway. Aziraphale had already fled.

On the way out of the hospital, he passed the young doctor’s office. She was on the phone, but she lowered her voice when she spotted him in the hall. Her eyes tracked him all the way to the door.

Crowley met him outside. “Well?”

“It seems we have permission to keep going.” He handed the keys over on reflex, so that Crowley could climb into the Jeep behind the wheel.

They headed out of town, moving east, bearing slightly north, towards the Arctic Sea. It was only early afternoon, but the sun was already setting. Though they didn’t have to worry about food or sleep, Aziraphale knew that they would have to think about stopping soon for the day. He glanced over at Crowley, who showed no signs of slowing. His eyes were focused straight ahead, jaw set, watching the white miles fall away beneath the tires.

After a time, Aziraphale said, “I’m afraid you were a bit rude back then.”

“When?” Crowley replied.

“To Ms. Ivanova. She’s quite under the weather, and she’s scared.”

“She didn’t look scared.”

“Humans are always scared when they’re sick. Their minds jump to all sorts of morbid conclusions.”

“She’ll be fine,” Crowley said.

“That’s what she said, too.” Aziraphale frowned thoughtfully. “I’m sorry about last night.”

“You mean when you led me on and then blueballed me?” Crowley’s expression did not change, and he did not even seem to notice Aziraphale wince. “Fortunately, I’m used to that by now. At least this time you had an excuse.”

Aziraphale didn’t answer. He turned away to look out the window. “There’s another of those tracks.”

“Then we’re going the right direction,” Crowley said through a tight jaw.

Aziraphale looked back, annoyed that Crowley had not taken his generous and gracious cue to change the subject. “You know, my dear, you only get like this when you’re trying to win some tedious argument that only you are having. What is it now? We find these specters - these ancient creatures - and somehow it proves God an inveterate liar about the Creation? You catch a whiff of the Holy Spirit blowing through them and it finally gives you the evidence you need to prove that the divine has terrible taste?”

It had been too much. Aziraphale knew as much even as he spoke the words, and yet he did not try to stem the torrent. Oh, he was a cruel soul; he had known as much all along.

Crowley let him get it all out, then he pressed his foot down on the Jeep’s break, bringing it to a stop in the middle of the icy track. “Is that what you think?” he asked quietly.

Cowed more by Crowley’s calmness than if he had shouted or sputtered or gotten sarcastic, Aziraphale shifted in his seat. “We never should have come here,” he muttered with a surfeit of unease.

“It was your idea. You dithered about it for weeks.”

“Because I was afraid you would hate it! I was afraid you would be bored, just like you were bored in America and with everything that we have done since embarking on this experiment together. Do you think I don’t know what I’ve done, Crowley? Condemned you to an eternity of boredom and merely tolerating things?”

“When did I say that?” Crowley demanded. “When did I ever say I was bored with you?”

“You didn’t have to. Last night, you made it clear enough.”

“Last night,” Crowley echoed. To Aziraphale’s surprise, he lifted on hand and pressed the heel of it to his forehead, as if to force the memory away. “I shouldn’t have brought that up. I know how you are, and that you don’t like when I pressure you. It was wrong--”

The attempt at an apology was more unsettling than if Crowley had kept fighting. Aziraphale was quick to say, “Without a little pressure, we’d never get anywhere.”

Crowley shook his head. “It was wrong. I just worry so much sometimes.”

“Heavens, about what?”

“That you regret it,” Crowley said. His voice kept getting lower and lower, until Aziraphale had to strain to hear him over the idling engine. “That night afterwards. I know you must regret something of it, but for a while I clung to a wild hope that you didn’t think the whole affair was a terrible mistake.”

“A mistake…” Aziraphale echoed. He had not framed the encounter in such terms before, and he knew as soon as he tried to think them what a poor fit they were for what had happened.

Crowley did not give him a chance to say as much, though. He pressed on, propelled by the immense kinetic energy of his passions. 

“You regret it,” he said. “We both regret it. You regret that it was what it was, and that it was with me. But I only regret that it could not be everything that you had hung your hopes upon when you consented to it.”

Aziraphale’s brow furrowed, and he said softly, “I never regretted it.”

Crowley’s jaw clenched, a reflexive motion as if the words had caused him pain. “You’re lying. I can’t believe that you would lie about something like that.”

“No,” Aziraphale continued gently. “Crowley, I’m not. I wasn’t sorry about what we did; I’m glad it happened. I was just afraid, scared that we did it for the wrong reasons.”

“There are wrong reasons?” Crowley sniffed.

“Yes,” Aziraphale replied. “Of course there are. If it was only because we were afraid, or no longer afraid, or afraid that we would soon be afraid again. We’ve always been more than that, haven’t we? More than the sum of the fear we felt every time we were alone together?”

Crowley was quiet for a long while. Aziraphale had just begun to think that he didn’t intend to answer at all when he let his breath out in a sigh and said, “You’re right, you know.”

“Ah,” Aziraphale said. “That’s good to know. I wasn’t sure.”

“You’re right, and I’m a perfect ass.” Crowley slid his hand across the seat, offering it. Aziraphale laced their fingers together.

“Come now, you’re far from perfect. But things would be dull without you.”

“Even this?” Crowley said, making a sweeping gesture that seemed to encompass all of the steppe and the mysteries it held.

“Whatever is out there, it’s not nearly as interesting if you have to see it alone.” He gave Crowley’s hand a squeeze. “Now, let’s stop this silly blather. It’s getting dark.”

“So it is,” Crowley said, but he wasn’t looking outside. His eyes were fixed squarely on Aziraphale’s face.

Outside, the Aurora Borealis gleamed in the darkening sky. It was a shame he was missing it.


	6. Chapter 6

That night the migration came again. Aziraphale fairly scrambled out of the Jeep to get a closer look at it. Crowley followed, though at a more measured pace. Surely it was still a remarkable sight, the likes of which upended the very notions of life and death… and yet wasn’t what had been happening back inside been remarkable as well? The great and unassailable Aziraphale, actually talking to him. About _things_.

However, when Crowley stepped out into the snow once more, his breath was taken away all over again. The column of specters seemed even denser than it had been the night before. They were closer than they had been, close enough that Crowley could smell the decidedly unpleasant odor of fur that was wet with ectoplasm. 

Though Crowley knew from the prints in the snow that they had been following in the steps of the migration all day, the specters tonight had changed course so as to keep their distance. He could not imagine what might have prompted this, since when they had lived these creatures had surely had no fear of humans. Maybe it was the smell of burning petrol that had driven them back, then. It was certainly a shame if they had gotten a whiff of dearly departed Auntie Maud coming from the Jeep’s tank, but at least it kept them away.

After a time - Crowley could not say for certain how long - it began to snow. Reaching out slowly, with a light touch, as if he might dissipate as readily as one of the specters, he set a hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder.

“Let’s go in. We’ll have another long drive tomorrow.”

Aziraphale turned back, blinked at him as if he did not know his face. Then, all at once, he recovered himself, placing a small bemused smile back on his lips. “Yes, let’s go in.”

They managed to get the back seat folded down, and arranged the cargo with far less finesse than Saya had. Crowley thought of her abruptly, though not with any significant concern. It was just a touch of the flu. It had come on quickly, though, and it had only manifested after they had seen the specters, as if they had carried it with them.

Crowley paused with a pallet of bottled water in his hands. He held himself very still, listening to the sounds of the migration moving through the snow. Would he have been able to feel something wrong even if it were there? Without the vast information networks of Hell at his disposal, the specters might herald anything - another Apocalypse, even - and Crowley would never know.

He and Aziraphale were cut off. As complete and isolated in their ignorance as humans were.

Crowley felt his heart begin to beat faster with the realization. There was a bitter taste in the back of his throat. He recognized it, from the past: it was the fanfare by which fear announced itself.

“Darling?” Aziraphale was inside the Jeep, kneeling on the makeshift bed. He gave Crowley a quizzical look and then held out his hand. “Are you coming?”

Shaking off the budding sensation of panic, Crowley set the water aside and climbed in back. Aziraphale took him by the shoulders and drew him into a kiss so abrupt Crowley was scarcely able to keep from knocking their heads together.

Crowley set them right, feeling the whole time as if an electrical charge were slowly sliding down his throat. Aziraphale’s hands moved up his arms, fingers digging in so that he could catch the shape of them through Crowley’s thick coat. He started to turn, guiding them down. Crowley stopped him.

“Are you sure about this, angel?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Crowley rolled his eyes, glad his dark glasses hid it. Surely Aziraphale did not want him to actually answer that. Still, Aziraphale seemed to have made up his mind, and he was remarkably free of fretting or fussing for once.

“All right,” Crowley conceded. And he delivered himself into Aziraphale’s hands, which proved to be entirely equal to the task.

***

The next morning, the world looked different.

A blanket of fresh snow carpeted the ground, smoothing away all imperfections. The tracks they had left behind them the day before had been completely covered, giving the impression that the Jeep had simply been dropped there, flung down haphazardly from the heavens.

Crowley, too, felt smoothed over and new. He watched with a curious eye as Aziraphale broke camp with unexpected competence, fueling up the Jeep from one of the petrol cans they had in the back.

When he got within range, Crowley reached out and snagged him by the waist.

“Oh? To what do I owe the honor?” he said, as Crowley drew him close to kiss him soundly in the frosty morning air.

“You’ve been awfully quiet,” Crowley said. “Tell me, do I have another few months of pretending nothing happened to look forward to?”

“This is, in fact, a contented silence,” Aziraphale said. “Now, let’s not interrupt it.”

He lifted Crowley’s hand to his lips, dusting a kiss over the backs of his knuckles. “You were dashing last night, if you must know,” he said with a sly wink, before turning to boost himself into the waiting Jeep.

Crowley was fairly stunned by Aziraphale’s change in demeanor. He had suddenly become accommodating - downright coquettish - as if something had shaken loose within him the night before. Crowley did not think that they had been nearly so acrobatic as to account for the shift, but he wasn’t about to act the ingrate about it.

He climbed in behind the wheel, and they went east. Towards what, Crowley had no idea, but in the very construct that served as his corporeal bones, he could feel it.

As the day went on, they wound down out of the hills into a natural low-lying area. It was warmer here, and the snow lay on the ground only in patches, floating atop the swampy soil. There were more of the animal tracks in the earth here, cut as neatly and cleanly into the mud as they had into the snow. The edges of the prints were dry and cracking, as if the foot or hoof that had made it was blazing hot.

Strange raised mounds dotted the otherwise flat landscape. When the Jeep ran over one of them, it depressed like a balloon and then sprang back into shape. Saya had mentioned the phenomenon earlier in one of the many digressions with which she had filled the empty quiet of a long drive.

Carbon dioxide and methane from the melting permafrost were trapped under the ground, stretching the topsoil to comic, cartoonish proportions. One day - not too far in the future - they would begin to burst.

Crowley had not been able to imagine it until now. The distinctive mounds poked up out of the ground on all sides, a minor catastrophe in the making but one that seemed now as inevitable as the turning of the seasons.

As they went on, they passed a few that had already popped, leaving perfectly round pits in the ground, each of a uniform depth.

Aziraphale made them stop so he could photograph the anomaly for Saya. “She would appreciate it,” he said. “A little something to let her know that we’re thinking of her.”

They piled out, and Crowley peered down into the muddy depths while Aziraphale fiddled with his phone like it was the first time he’d wondered what any of the icons besides the little headset one did.

There was an inch of coal black water in the bottom of the crater, but where the light of the low sun struck hit the surface, it took on an iridescent cast, like a scum of oil. A curious earthy odor drifted up from the depths, reminiscent of a particularly unpleasant version of cut grass, or a pile of fallen leaves that had been picturesquely arranged to cover a corpse.

Holding his breath against the sickly-sweet smell that seemed to increase by the moment, Crowley knelt down on the edge of the pit, peering into the darkness. Something was wrong about the way the slurry of mud and stagnant water lay on the bottom, something off about the way the greasy rainbows bent in the light...

The autoflash on Aziraphale’s phone went off, abruptly illuminating the bottom of the crater.

Crowley only caught an instantaneous glimpse of its depths, but it was sufficient to send him reeling away. He landed in an undignified sprawl on his backside in the mud.

“Gracious,” Aziraphale said, turning the phone about so he could peer into the inscrutable lens. “What a nonsensical contraption.”

Crowley heard this from somewhere far behind him. He had already scrambled to his feet and fled back to the Jeep. Flinging open the back gate, he dug through the supplies until he found a flashlight. 

“Is something the matter, darling?” Aziraphale asked as he returned.

Crowley hesitated a moment before saying, “Don’t look at this.”

He turned on the light and shone it down into the crater. Shapes at the bottom drew into focus. Here a patch of wet fur, there a wing jutting straight up out of the muck. An antler laying half sunk into the mud. The hollow eyesocket of a skull.

They were the corpses of animals, strewn across the bottom of the pit where they had fallen. Most were birds or small rodents, but Crowley saw a steppe antelope and what he thought was the remains of a fox. Though they could not have been fresh, all were well preserved, untouched by the insects that must have swarmed in this unseasonably warm weather.

“My word,” Aziraphale murmured. Crowley glanced over at him and found him staring down into the crater. Of course, he had not looked away at all. “What happened here?”

“How on earth should I know?” 

Crowley made himself flip the flashlight off. Carrion eater and loathsome serpent though he may have been, he still didn’t want to spend any longer looking at _that_. He reached over, groping blindly until he found Aziraphale’s arm, at which point he turned and began to march him back to the car.

“The poor things,” Aziraphale murmured. “Surely at least some of them were cute and fluffy.”

Though that was undoubtedly true, it wasn’t what Crowley was worried about now. He could still smell the stench coming up from the depths of the crater. It was the smell of death, decay, but with something else mixed in as well. An alien taint to the air exhaled from the depths of the frozen earth that seemed to settle on Crowley’s skin, coat the back of his throat with an oily sheen.

He turned to Aziraphale to say as much, but before he got a chance a tremor shook the ground beneath his feet.

Crowley gripped fast to Aziraphale’s arm as an explosion echoed across the tundra. Not too far away, just beyond the next rolling ridge of the steppe, a shimmer of light burst skyward. The air clouded and distorted, taking on a tinge that was first green, then blue, then pink. The colors of the Aurora Borealis.

Another one of the bubbles underground had just popped, sending its payload up into the atmosphere. 

“We have to go,” Aziraphale said. It took Crowley a moment to realize that he did not mean the sensible thing: go back to civilization.

“It can’t hurt us,” Aziraphale went on. “Whatever is going on, it can’t touch us.”

“How do you know that?” Crowley snapped. “Does the heavenly sphere also give you unique insight into what you find digging in the dirt? There’s something in the ground out here. I can feel it. Don’t pretend that you can’t.”

“That’s why we came, isn’t it?” Aziraphale said. “To find out what’s happening?”

“You seem to have mistaken us for actual paranormal investigators. We’re tourists, remember. We’re retired.”

Aziraphale’s lips tightened. For a moment, he looked as if he regretted what he was about to say, but then he said it anyway. 

“What if it’s something major? Something… Unpleasant? I know you worry about that. I know you’d want to know. Well, darling, we’re cut off from the old boy’s club. The only way we’re ever going to find out the truth is if we look for it ourselves.”

Crowley felt the breath go out of him at the words. He lifted a hand to his lips as if to trap it inside. 

“Fine,” he spat, thrusting the keys into Aziraphale’s hand. “Do what you think you have to.”

Aziraphale took the keys, but his hand lingered, brushing Crowley’s fingers. “Only with you.”

“Yes,” Crowley sniffed, as if he was annoyed instead of moved. “Of course with me. As if I ever let you conduct your half-baked schemes alone.”

They climbed back into the Jeep, and Aziraphale took them over the next rise. A fresh crater was spread out before them, just as round and neat as the last. This one did not yet have an accumulation of dirty snowmelt in the bottom, but the rocky sides were slicked with the same oily rainbow. 

When Crowley came close, he could feel heat radiating up out of the earth, as if the ground had suddenly split open onto a pit of black fire. A smell like rot drifted up out of the depths, though they were mercifully free of animals.

While Crowley and Aziraphale looked down into the pit, a soft thud on the grass beside them caught their attention. Crowley looked over in time to see a second black and white hooded crow drop out of the sky and land next to the first. 

Both birds were stone dead, their wings spread out in an attitude of continued flight. Around both of their beaks was a pinkish foam, and their eyes were milky white.

They had flown over the crater, breathed the air exhaled from its depths. That was all it taken for the birds. Larger animals might linger a little longer after infections. Humans, as long as a day or two. They would all succumb in the end.

All at once, Aziraphale seized his hand. “We have to get out of here.”

“You’re finally talking sense,” Crowley replied. “Let me drive. We can make it back to that town before it’s dark.”

“No,” Aziraphale said. “Forget the town. We must go on.”

“People need to know what’s going on out here.”

“For now, the people are fine,” Aziraphale said. “There’s no one around for miles. Just us, and those specters. And they’re all going somewhere.”

“Us, and those specters, and about a thousand dead fuzzy bunnies.”

“I still have the keys, you know,” Aziraphale said, patting his pocket.

Crowley rolled his eyes. “Did you learn that from me?”

“To be so annoying? Yes, I did. Now, let’s hurry.”

***

They kept driving, no longer looking for tracks. They didn’t need to anymore; it was clear where they had to go. Something was guiding them now, like a star that hung stationary in the sky, like a magnetic needle would always align to true north.

The dead wildlife also let them know they were on the right track.

It increased in frequency as they went on. Birds and chipmunks and raccoons mostly, but interspersed with deer and lynx. They even spotted a brown bear, sprawled on its back in an impression of hibernating sleep.

All of them had the same pinkish slime around their mouths, and the same white clouds in their eyes.

It was a long time before either of them spoke. The silence had started to feel a natural as breathing. At last, Aziraphale said, “It’s the virus, the ancient disease. Ms. Ivanova tried to warn us…”

“We don’t know that,” Crowley said, glad that reverting to playing Devil’s advocate allowed him to be the optimistic one for once. “That woman and her crazy talk aren’t even here. When she’s feeling better, we’ll bring her out here to see for herself--”

“I don’t think she’s going to get better,” Aziraphale said in a soft voice that immediately curdled Crowley’s words in his throat.

He glanced over at Aziraphale. He was staring straight ahead, his eyes narrowed and his jaw set, forcing his face into unnatural stiff lines.

“I’m afraid, Crowley,” he said at last, meaning it not as a timid confession, but rather a straightforward statement of fact. “I don’t want to find what we’re going to find.”

“So let’s just go back,” Crowley said. “To London, to the bookshop. There’s nothing out here that concerns us anymore.”

“No,” Aziraphale said quietly. “It’s waiting for us.”

A knot formed in Crowley’s throat at those words, but he found them impossible to contradict or deny. Besides, there was no time for either; it was at that moment that they came over one of the rolling hills that dotted the steppe and they reached the end of the road.

The ground dropped away before them, sheer and sharp as if the earth had been hacked off by a blade. Aziraphale brought the Jeep to a stop at the edge of a steep cliff that curved away in both directions, eventually forming the rim of a massive crater gouged out of the earth.

The sun was sinking beneath the horizon as Crowley climbed out of the Jeep, and the low light that slanted across the crater shimmered in streaks and spots of color, as if viewed through a prism. Though it was rapidly getting dark and shadows were lengthening across the land, Crowley could see that they were not the first to come this way, not by a longshot.

The perimeter of the crater was strewn with dead wildlife. Most of the caracasses were deer, hares, lynx. The same animals that they had been seeing all day. But even Crowley could tell that there were some mixed in amongst them that should not have been there. He spotted a huge lion with foot-long curling incisors, a muskox with a ridge of matted hair on its back, a white wolf of wildly exaggerated size and proportion.

All were perfectly preserved, as if the insects and the bacteria that always followed death would not touch them.

Crowley had no time to make sense of it, no time even to put his thoughts in order. Aziraphale had wandered to the edge of the crater, where he stood looking down into its depths with an expression which might have been horror but which looked closer to shocked offense, as if one of the countless carcasses had cracked an off-color joke.

Making his way to Aziraphale’s side, Crowley looked down. The cliff jutted out over the crater, a promontory over the abyss.The pit extended down a dozen meters, the bottom almost lost in a swirling mass of bluish mist. 

Crowley could see them down there, heaped up under the cliff, littering one stretch where the side of the crater sloped rather than dropped: a carpet of bodies old and new. The thawing of the crater had disgorged its contents, the ancient and perfectly-preserved carcasses of mammoth and cave bear and giant sloth, all arrested in the attitude of straining upward towards the surface.

A haze hung over the depths, a mist that shone all the colors of the Northern Lights. It drifted upward in a translucent mass. It would join the Arctic air currents, seep into the ground water and be carried all the way to the Lena River. Then, from there, to the Pacific tides, which would distribute it around the world.

Crowley realized it all in an instant, the whole inconceivable truth of it. When he glanced in Aziraphale’s direction, he could tell that he understood too.

Without a word, without pretense or hesitation, Crowley reached over and took his hand and held it tight.

“They did it themselves,” Aziraphale murmured. “They didn’t need us to end the world.”

“Honestly, I never thought they did,” Crowley replied.

“Do you think anyone else knows? Gabriel or… anyone?”

“No,” Crowley said. “They won’t know, not until it’s too late.”

“She might decide this world isn’t worth salvaging,” Aziraphale said. “What will we do then? Where will we go?”

“I don’t know.”

Aziraphale was quiet for a time, and Crowley thought he must be contemplating the great injustice of it. They’d had centuries to get things right, but not an eternity. This plague had been waiting in the ice even longer than they had waited, and now it would undo all their great plans, and hopes.

Not by fire or by ice. Not by a cosmic battle or a risen Antichrist or four horsemen riding forth. But by the carelessness of humans and by a tiny virus, barely even alive in the strictest sense, the world as they had always known it would end.

There was no denying it now, no undoing what had been done. God had let them believe many lies, but the worst of all was that the earth was theirs to do with as they wished. It had never belonged to humanity. It had never even really been God’s. It had only ever been its own, and it had decided that it was time to evict its sloppy tenants.

As for the two of them, they would have to face it as mortals, but they would be together and as such nothing could ever truly be too much to endure.

“It could be worse,” Aziraphale said suddenly, softly. “At least I can see the great plan in this.”

Crowley could see it too.

He moved closer to Aziraphale and put an arm around his shoulders. As the sun went down, they could hear in the distance the stirring of a great migration. A thousand million ancient ghosts finding their way home at last.

They held each other like that for a long time, watching as the bright mist of their destruction shimmered up into a sky of innumerable stars.


End file.
